Control signaling for wireless communication

ABSTRACT

There is disclosed a method of operating a transmitting radio node in a wireless communication network. The method includes transmitting first control signaling in a control region, the first control signaling having at least a first signaling characteristic from a set of signaling characteristics in which the signaling characteristics of the set of signaling characteristics are associated to the control region. The disclosure also pertains to related devices and methods.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No.17/067,075, filed Oct. 9, 2020 entitled “CONTROL SIGNALING FOR WIRELESSCOMMUNICATION,” the entirety of which is incorporated herein byreference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure pertains to wireless communication technology, inparticular for high frequencies.

BACKGROUND

For future wireless communication systems, use of higher frequencies isconsidered, which allows large bandwidths to be used for communication.However, use of such higher frequencies brings new problems, for exampleregarding physical properties and timing. Ubiquitous or almostubiquitous use of beamforming, with often comparatively small beams, mayprovide additional complications that need to be addressed.

SUMMARY

It is an object of this disclosure to provide improved approaches ofhandling wireless communication, in particular regarding controlsignaling. Control signaling may be provided by a transmitting (radio)node, e.g. a network node, to allow a receiving (radio) node like a userequipment to communicate based on the control signaling, e.g. totransmit and/or receive data signaling, for example according to ascheduling grant or scheduling assignment, and/or to perform linkadaptation and/or power control.

The approaches are particularly suitable for millimeter wavecommunication, in particular for radio carrier frequencies around and/orabove 52.6 GHz, which may be considered high radio frequencies (highfrequency) and/or millimeter waves. The carrier frequency/ies may bebetween 52.6 and 140 GHz, e.g. with a lower border between 52.6, 55, 60,71 GHz and/or a higher border between 71, 72, 90, 114, 140 GHz orhigher, in particular between 55 and 90 GHz, or between 60 and 72 GHz;however, higher frequencies may be considered, in particular frequencyof 71 GHz or 72 GHz or above, and/or 100 GHz or above, and/or 140 GHz orabove. The carrier frequency may in particular refer to a centerfrequency or maximum frequency of the carrier. The radio nodes and/ornetwork described herein may operate in wideband, e.g. with a carrierbandwidth of 1 GHz or more, or 2 GHz or more, or even larger, e.g. up to8 GHz; the scheduled or allocated bandwidth may be the carrierbandwidth, or be smaller, e.g. depending on channel and/or procedure. Insome cases, operation may be based on an OFDM waveform or a SC-FDMwaveform (e.g., downlink and/or uplink), in particular aFDF-SC-FDM-based waveform. However, operation based on a single carrierwaveform, e.g. SC-FDE (which may be pulse-shaped or Frequency DomainFiltered, e.g. based on modulation scheme and/or MCS), may be consideredfor downlink and/or uplink. In general, different waveforms may be usedfor different communication directions. Communicating using or utilisinga carrier and/or beam may correspond to operating using or utilising thecarrier and/or beam, and/or may comprise transmitting on the carrierand/or beam and/or receiving on the carrier and/or beam. Operation maybe based on and/or associated to a numerology, which may indicate asubcarrier spacing and/or duration of an allocation unit and/or anequivalent thereof, e.g., in comparison to an OFDM based system. Asubcarrier spacing or equivalent frequency interval may for examplecorrespond to 960 kHZ, or 1920 kHz, e.g. representing the bandwidth of asubcarrier or equivalent.

The approaches are particularly advantageously implemented in a future6^(th) Generation (6G) telecommunication network or 6G radio accesstechnology or network (RAT/RAN), in particular according to 3GPP (3^(rd)Generation Partnership Project, a standardisation organization). Asuitable RAN may in particular be a RAN according to NR, for examplerelease 18 or later, or LTE Evolution. However, the approaches may alsobe used with other RAT, for example future 5.5G systems or IEEE basedsystems.

There is disclosed a method of operating a transmitting radio node in awireless communication network. The method comprises transmitting firstcontrol signaling in a control region, the first control signalinghaving at least a first signaling characteristic from a set of signalingcharacteristics, wherein the signaling characteristics of the set ofsignaling characteristics are associated to the control region.

A transmitting radio node for a wireless communication network is alsoconsidered. Transmitting radio node is adapted for transmitting firstcontrol signaling in a control region, the first control signalinghaving at least a first signaling characteristic from a set of signalingcharacteristics, wherein the signaling characteristics of the set ofsignaling characteristics are associated to the control region.

Moreover, a method of operating a receiving radio node in a wirelesscommunication network is described. The method comprises communicatingwith a network node and/or a transmitting radio node based on firstcontrol signaling received in a control region, the first controlsignaling having at least a first signaling characteristic from a set ofsignaling characteristics, wherein the signaling characteristics of theset of signaling characteristics are associated to the control region.

There is also considered a receiving radio node for a wirelesscommunication network. The receiving radio node is adapted forcommunicating with a network node and/or a transmitting radio node basedon first control signaling received in a control region. The firstcontrol signaling has at least a first signaling characteristic from aset of signaling characteristics, wherein the signaling characteristicsof the set of signaling characteristics are associated to the controlregion.

The approaches described herein allow efficient control signaling, inparticular with low processing requirements within the control regionand/or associated search space. The set of signaling characteristics mayin general pertain to a set of different values for the same parameter,e.g. different aggregation levels and/or different durations, orsimilar.

Control signaling may be associated to and/or be represented bysignaling on a physical control channel, in particular a PDCCH or PSCCH.In some cases, control signaling may represent coded information, e.g.error coded information (e.g., with error correction coding like CRC,and/or in some cases forward error coding). In other cases, controlsignaling may be represented by a signaling sequence, which for examplemay comprise a plurality of modulation symbols of specified and/orconfigured and/or predefined content or meaning. Control signaling mayrepresent a scheduling grant and/or scheduling assignment. The firstcontrol signaling may represent one control information message, e.g. aDCI message or SCI message. Communicating based on received controlsignaling may comprise transmitting and/or receiving signaling like datasignaling as scheduled by the control signaling, and/or performing linkadaptation and/or power control and/or beam management and/ormeasurements according to the control information represented and/orcarried by the control signaling.

In particular, the set of signaling characteristics may be and/or maycomprise a set of aggregation levels available for control signaling.Thus, different control signalings may differ in aggregation level.Control signalings with different aggregation levels may represent thesame information content and/or format, and/or for example may differ induration and/or repetition and/or total transmission power and/orfrequency domain extension. The set of signaling characteristics may beassociated to control signalings of the same type and/or format and/orinformation content. The aggregation level of the first controlsignaling may be unknown to the receiving radio node; approachesdescribed herein allow easy monitoring of the control region and/orassociated search space and identifying transmitted control signaling,e.g. based on blind detection. In such blind detection, a receivingradio node may evaluate and/or estimate which candidate signaling is themost likely to be the actually transmitted signaling, e.g. the firstcontrol signaling.

It may be considered that a duration of first control signaling isassociated to the first signaling characteristic. In particular,different durations may be associated to different signalingcharacteristics; e.g., different aggregation levels may be associated todifferent durations. Thus, the control signaling may be spread out overtime, e.g. for high aggregation levels.

Alternatively, or additionally, a frequency distribution of firstcontrol signaling may be associated to the first signalingcharacteristic. The frequency distribution may refer to a frequencydomain extension, e.g. a contiguous extension over one frequency domaininterval like neighbouring subcarriers, or to a non-contiguousextension, e.g. over a plurality of non-neighbouring intervals and/orsubcarriers (or groups or blocks of subcarriers).

To different signaling characteristics of the set, different durationsand/or frequency domain extensions or distributions may be associated.For example, to each signaling characteristic of the set, there may beassociated a different duration and/or frequency domain extension ordistribution; however, in some cases, (at least some) differentsignaling characteristics may have associated the same duration and/orfrequency domain extension or distribution.

It may be considered that the first control signaling comprises and/orhas associated to it first reference signaling, in particularDemodulation Reference Signaling, DMRS, and/or tracking referencesignaling, e.g. phase tracking RS and/or timing tracking RS and/orposition tracking RS. The first reference signaling may be transmittedbefore the control signaling and/or leading control information of thecontrol signaling, e.g. in a first allocation unit or block symbolcarrying control signaling (or a group of first symbols or allocationunits). The set of signaling characteristics may represent referencesignaling, e.g. its duration and/or location (e.g., in time and/orfrequency domain, and/or within the control region) and/or number ofrepetitions and/or signaling sequence representing the signaling. Insome cases, the (first) reference signaling may be considered part ofthe control signaling, in particular if the set of signalingcharacteristics pertain to the reference signaling. In other cases,reference signaling may be considered separately, e.g. if it may beindicated and/or configured separately from the control signaling.

In some variants, the first control signaling may be from a set ofcontrol signalings available for transmission in the control region.Each of the set of control signalings may be associated to a signalingcharacteristic from the set of signaling characteristics. The sets maybe configured or configurable together (e.g., jointly, with the samemessage or same parametrisation) or separately (or independent from eachother), e.g. with higher layer signaling and/or broadcast signaling,and/or may be predefined. This allows low overhead for control signalingand/or configurations.

It may be considered that the location of reference signaling (e.g.,associated to the first control signaling) in the control region is froma set of nested locations. The nested locations may be associated to aset of control signaling and/or associated reference signaling.

In general, the first reference signaling may be associated to the firstcontrol signaling, the first reference signaling being from a set ofreference signalings. Each (potential) reference signaling may beassociated to a location; the locations of different referencesignalings may be nested such that they at least partially overlap intime and frequency domain. In particular, each of the referencesignalings of the set may cover and/or occupy and/or carried on at leaston common allocation unit and/or share a common frequency time interval(while some may extend over the common unit and/or interval). The totalresource size (e.g., duration x frequency domain extension) may be thesame for (at least some or all) of the reference signalings. Referencesignaling may in particular lead control information of the controlsignaling in time domain. Different allocation units or block symbolscarrying reference signaling may carry the same signaling (e.g., arepetition), or different signaling (e.g., different parts of asignaling sequence). It may be considered that the reference signalingin the common allocation unit and/or interval is the same for thedifferent reference signalings. Accordingly, channel estimation resultsmay be used when evaluating control signaling candidates.

It may in general be considered that duration and/or frequency domainextension of first reference signaling associated to the first controlsignaling may be associated to the first signaling characteristic. Ingeneral, a characteristic being associated to another characteristic mayindicate that the characteristics may be linked, e.g. unambiguouslyassociated, to each other, e.g., one may be dependent on the other (orvice versa, or both), and/or that a receiver may determine one based onthe other. For example, from the duration and/or frequency extension, ofreceived first control signaling, the aggregation level may beretrievable, or vice versa. It may be considered that for differentaggregation levels, different processing may be necessary, e.g. in termsof decoding and/or soft-combing of signaling. Signaling of differentaggregation levels may be within the control region and/or associated toone transmission occasion, e.g. one uninterrupted and/or contiguoustransmission of controls signaling (and possible reference signalingassociated thereto). A time domain resource may be represented by ablock symbol or allocation unit; a frequency domain resource may berepresented by a (e.g., contiguous) frequency interval, e.g. one or more(e.g., contiguous or neighbouring) subcarriers or blocks of subcarriers.A location in time and/or frequency domain may indicate exactly whichtime and/or frequency domain resources is referred to, e.g. which timeand/or frequency domain resource/s a signaling candidate would occupy orsignaling occupies. Signalings or signaling candidate may be consideredto overlap in time and/or frequency domain for the common allocationunit/s and/or interval/s they share. Different control signalingcandidates and/or associated (potential) reference signaling may shareresources with different time and/or frequency domain extensions. It maybe considered that each potential control signaling (of the set ofsignalings) and/or reference signaling (e.g., of a set of referencesignalings) has at least one time and/or frequency resource in commonwith each other signaling of the set; it may be the same at least onetime and/or frequency resource for all (control or reference)signalings, or a different one. A location may be defined and/orrepresented by a start and an extension in the associated domain/s, e.g.a starting allocation unit and/or starting subcarrier (e.g., lowestsubcarrier) or frequency domain start (e.g., lowest frequency or lowerfrequency border).

A control region generally may comprise time and/or frequency domainresources. A control region may be intended and/or indicated and/orconfigured, e.g. with higher layer signaling, for transmission ofcontrol signaling, in particular first control signaling. A controlregion may be periodic or aperiodic; in some cases, it may repeat atcertain time intervals (e.g., within a larger time interval) or be setor triggered or indicated for limited usage, e.g. in general in relationto a timing structure like a frame structure associated to the wirelesscommunication network and/or used therein. A control region may berepresented by a CORESET or a resource set in time and/or frequencydomain. To a control region, there may be associated a search space. Thesearch space may contain and/or be based on the control region. In thisdisclosure, features associated to a control region may be associated tothe associated search space and vice versa. A search space may provideparameters and/or features associated to control signaling to beexpected and/or processed and/or received and/or transmitted on resourceof the control region, e.g. one or more signaling characteristics ofcontrol signaling associated to the search space, e.g. type of controlsignaling (e.g., format) and/or allowable aggregation level and/orpossible location in the control region. It should be noted that thecontrol region may be shifted in time domain from the perspective of thetransmitter and receiver, e.g. due to delay effects and/or travel timeof signaling. However, the same term will be used for both perspectives,as there will be an unambiguous association; in particular, thetransmitter will intend reception in the control region of the receiver.A control region and/or search space may be configured by a network,e.g. a transmitting radio node, e.g. with higher layer signaling and/orbroadcast signaling. A search space may be device-specific (e.g.,configured specifically for one device, and/or with unicast signaling)or a common search space, e.g. configured with multicast and/orbroadcast signaling. A control region may span one or more block symbolsand/or allocation units and/or have an extension in frequency domaincorresponding to a control region bandwidth and/or a plurality ofsubcarriers or resource blocks, e.g. physical and/or virtual resourceblocks. It should be noted that control signaling of the set of controlsignalings may comprise control signaling that may occupy time/frequencyresource/s (e.g., a set of resources) included in the control regionand/or search space, but do not necessarily have to use all resources ofthe control region and/or search space. In general, the control regionand/or search space may represent resources (e.g., a set oftime/frequency resources) a receiver may monitor and/or search forcontrol signaling, e.g. control signaling addressed to and/or intendedfor the receiver. Parameters and/or characteristics of the search spacemay limit and/or define the monitoring in more detail.

The transmitting radio node may comprise, and/or be adapted to utilise,processing circuitry and/or radio circuitry, in particular a transmitterand/or transceiver, to process (e.g., trigger and/or schedule) and/ortransmit control signaling and/or reference signaling. The transmittingradio node may in particular be a network node or base station, and/or anetwork radio node; it may be implemented as an IAB or relay node.However, in some cases, e.g. a sidelink scenario, it may be a wirelessdevice. The receiving radio node may comprise, and/or be adapted toutilise, processing circuitry and/or radio circuitry, in particular areceiver and/or transmitter and/or transceiver, to receive and/orprocess (e.g. receive and/or demodulate and/or decode and/or performblind detection and/or schedule or trigger such) control signaling.Receiving may comprise demodulating and/or decoding the signaling, e.g.based on associated reference signaling, in particular DMRS and/ortracking reference signaling, based on which timing and/or channelestimation may be performed. The receiving radio node may in particularbe a wireless device like a terminal or UE. However, in some cases, e.g.IAB or relay scenarios or multiple-RAT scenarios, it may be network nodeor base station, and/or a network radio node, for example an IAB orrelay node.

The set of signaling characteristics and/or set of signalings may ingeneral be predefined and/or configured to the receiving radio node,e.g. with higher layer signaling and/or broadcast signaling, e.g. fromthe transmitting radio node or the network. A set of signalings mayrepresent available or possible control signalings, which may forexample be transmitted (and/or be received) in the control region and/orassociated search space. As such, control signalings of the set ofcontrol signalings, may represent candidate signalings (e.g., for whichto monitor), e.g. PDCCH candidates or DCI candidates or PSCCHcandidates. The first control signaling may represent the actuallytransmitted (and preferably correctly received and identified) controlsignaling from the set. The set of signaling characteristics mayrepresent potential characteristics of the set of signalings orcandidates; the first signaling characteristic may correspond to acharacteristic of the first control signaling. It may generally beconsidered that the set of signaling characteristic pertains to aplurality of characteristics (e.g., each member of the set representinga subset of characteristics, e.g. different types like aggregation leveland/or duration and/or reference signaling and/or location), or a subsetof characteristics with more than one member.

Signaling, in particular control signaling, may have a duration (in timedomain, also referred to as length of time domain extension) and/orfrequency domain extension. The duration may correspond to one or more(e.g., an integer number of) symbols and/or allocation units. Referencesignaling associated to and/or included in control signaling may allowand/or be intended for channel estimation and/or demodulation and/orextraction of the control signaling or control information representedby the control signaling.

There is also described a program product comprising instructionscausing processing circuitry to control and/or perform a method asdescribed herein. Moreover, a carrier medium arrangement carrying and/orstoring a program product as described herein is considered. Aninformation system comprising, and/or connected or connectable, to aradio node is also disclosed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The drawings are provided to illustrate concepts and approachesdescribed herein, and are not intended to limit their scope. Thedrawings comprise:

FIG. 1 , showing an exemplary transmitting modulation scheme;

FIG. 2 , showing an exemplary timing structure;

FIG. 3 , showing an exemplary set of control signalings and/or DMRS;

FIG. 4 , showing a further exemplary set of control signalings and/orDMRS;

FIG. 5 , showing an exemplary (e.g., receiving) radio node; and

FIG. 6 , showing another exemplary (e.g., transmitting) radio node.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following, a wireless device or UE may be used as example for areceiving radio node; a base station or network node may be used as anexample for a transmitting radio node. It is noted that the exemplaryterms may be replace by the more general terms.

Mobile broadband will continue to drive demand for big overall trafficcapacity and huge achievable end-user data rates in the wireless accessnetwork. Several scenarios in the future will require data rates of upto 10 Gbps in local areas. Demand for very high system capacity and veryhigh end-user date rates can for example be met by networks withdistances between access nodes ranging from a few meters in indoordeployments up to roughly 50 m in outdoor deployments, i.e. with aninfra-structure density considerably higher than the densest networks oftoday.

In 3GPP Rel-15, a 5G system referred as New Radio (NR) was specified. NRis designed to provide services for multiple use cases such as enhancedmobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable and low latency communication(URLLC), and machine type communication (MTC). Each of these serviceshas different technical requirements. For example, the generalrequirement for eMBB is high data rate with moderate latency andmoderate coverage, while URLLC service requires a low latency and highreliability transmission but perhaps for moderate data rates.

Besides traditional licensed exclusive bands, NR systems are currentlybeing extended expected to operate on unlicensed bands. The NR systemspecifications currently address two frequency ranges (FR1 and FR2). Tosupport ever growing mobile traffic, further extension of the NR systemto support spectrum higher than 5.26 GHz is expected in the near future.

Table 1 Frequency ranges supported by NR Frequency range Correspondingdesignation frequency range FR1 410 MHz-7125 MHz FR2 24250 MHz-52600 MHz

The downlink transmission waveform in NR is conventional OFDM using acyclic prefix. The uplink transmission waveform is conventional OFDMusing a cyclic prefix with a transform precoding function performing DFTspreading that can be disabled or enabled. Multiple numerologies aresupported in NR. A numerology is defined by sub-carrier spacing and CPoverhead. Multiple subcarrier spacings (SCS) can be derived by scaling abasic subcarrier spacing by an integer 2^(μ). The numerology used can beselected independently of the frequency band although it is assumed notto use a very small subcarrier spacing at very high carrier frequencies.Flexible network and UE channel bandwidths are supported. The supportedtransmission numerologies in NR are summarized table 2.

TABLE 2 NR numerologies Supported for Supported for μ Δf = 2^(μ) ·15[kHz] Cyclic prefix data synch 0 15 Normal Yes Yes 1 30 Normal Yes Yes2 60 Normal, Yes No Extended 3 120 Normal Yes Yes 4 240 Normal No Yes

From a RAN1 specification perspective, maximum channel bandwidth per NRcarrier is 400 MHz in Rel-15. At least for single numerology case,candidates of the maximum number of subcarriers per NR carrier is 3300in Rel-15 from RAN1 specification perspective.

Downlink and uplink transmissions are organized into frames with 10 msduration, consisting of ten 1 ms subframes. Each frame is divided intotwo equally-sized half-frames of five subframes each. The slot durationis 14 symbols with Normal CP and 12 symbols with Extended CP, and scalesin time as a function of the used sub-carrier spacing so that there isalways an integer number of slots in a subframe. More specifically, thenumber of slots per subframe is 2^(μ).

NR downlink physical resources within a slot can thus be seen as atime-frequency grid, where each resource element corresponds to one OFDMsubcarrier during one OFDM symbol interval. A resource block may bedefined as 12 consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain. Theuplink subframe has the same subcarrier spacing as the downlink and thesame number of SC-FDMA symbols in the time domain as OFDM symbols in thedownlink (if using SC-FDMA).

In NR, downlink control information (DCI) is received over the physicallayer downlink control channel (PDCCH). The PDCCH may carry DCI inmessages with different formats. DCI format 0_0 and 0_1 are DCI messagesused to convey uplink grants (scheduling grants) to the UE fortransmission of the physical layer data channel in the uplink (PUSCH)and DCI format 1_0 and 1_1 are used to convey downlink grants(scheduling assignments) for transmission of the physical layer datachannel on the downlink (PDSCH). Other DCI formats (2_0, 2_1, 2_2 and2_3) are used for other purposes such as transmission of slot formatinformation, reserved resources, transmit power control information,etc.

A PDCCH candidate is searched within a common or UE-specific searchspace which is mapped to a set of time and frequency resources referredto as a control resource set (CORESET) instance. The search spaceswithin which PDCCH candidates must be monitored are configured to the UEvia radio resource control (RRC) signaling. A monitoring periodicity isalso configured for different search space sets. A CORESET is defined bythe frequency domain location and size as well as the time domain size.A CORESET in NR can be 1, 2 or 3 OFDM symbols in duration. The smallestunit used for defining CORESETs is a Resource Element Group (REG) whichis defined as spanning 12 subcarriers x 1 OFDM symbol in frequency andtime. Resource-element groups within a control-resource set are numberedin increasing order in a time-first manner, starting with 0 for thefirst OFDM symbol and the lowest-numbered resource block in the controlresource set. As a result, though different PDCCHs can occupy differentamount of frequency domain resources, all PDCCHs in a CORESET have thesame duration as the duration of the CORESET.

Each REG may contain demodulation reference signals (DM-RS) to aid inthe estimation of the radio channel over which that REG was transmitted(assuming transmission of DCI in a REG). When transmitting the PDCCH, aprecoder could be used to apply weights at the transmit antennas basedon some knowledge of the radio channel prior to transmission. It ispossible to improve channel estimation performance at the UE byestimating the channel over multiple REGs that are proximate in time andfrequency, if the precoder used at the transmitter for the REGs is notdifferent. To assist the UE with channel estimation, the multiple REGscan be grouped together to form a REG bundle, and the REG bundle sizefor a CORESET may be indicated to the UE. The UE may assume that anyprecoder used for the transmission of the PDCCH is the same for all theREGs in the REG bundle. A REG bundle may consist of 2, 3 or 6 REGs.

A control channel element (CCE) may consist of 6 REGs. The REGs within aCCE may either be contiguous or distributed in frequency. When the REGsare distributed in frequency, the CORESET is said to be using aninterleaved mapping of REGs to a CCE and if the REGs are not distributedin frequency, a non-interleaved mapping is said to be used.

PDCCHs targeting different coverage ranges may be designed based onassigning different amounts of resources like frequency domain resourcesto the PDCCHs. A PDCCH candidate may span 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 CCEs, and thenumber of aggregated CCEs used is referred to as the aggregation levelfor the PDCCH candidate. A hashing function is used to determine theCCEs corresponding to PDCCH candidates that a UE must monitor within asearch space set. An exemplary set of PDCCH candidates in a CORESET mayfor example comprise 32 available CCEs. Hashing may be done differentlyfor different UEs and/or in different slots, so that the CCEs used bythe UEs are randomized and the probability of collisions betweenmultiple UEs for which PDCCH messages are included in a CORESET isreduced.

Blind decoding of potential PDCCH transmissions is attempted by the UEin each of the configured PDCCH candidates within a slot. In anyparticular slot, the UE may be configured to monitor multiple PDCCHcandidates in multiple search spaces which may be mapped to one or moreCORESETs. PDCCH candidates may need to be monitored multiple times in aslot, once every slot, or once in multiple of slots. The maximum numberof PDCCH candidates that can be monitored by a UE for a carrier within aslot are summarized in table 3. The complexity incurred at the UE to dothis depends on the number of CCEs which need to be processed to testall the candidates in the CORESET. Channel estimation is a keycontributor to the complexity incurred by the UE. The maximum number ofCCEs of channel estimation supported by the UE for a carrier within aslot are also indicated in table 3.

TABLE 3 Maximum number of PDCCH candidates and maximum number of CCE forchannel estimation within a slot for a carrier. SCS 15 kHz 30 kHz 60 kHz120 kHz Max # of candidates 44 36 22 20 Max # of CCE 56 56 48 32estimation

PA (power amplifier) efficiency at higher frequency is expected todegrade. At higher frequencies, and especially in millimeter wave(mmWave) frequencies, output power per transistor as well as power addedefficiency may decrease. A waveform with high power back-off to supportEVM and out-of-band emission requirements could dramatically reduce PAefficiency even further. Low PAPR waveforms designed to minimize PAbackoff and maximize efficiency may be considered.

Given the high data rate and high sampling rates the system is expectedto operate at, the complexity and performance tradeoff for waveformgeneration/modulation and reception/demodulation should be considered. Ahigher Tx DAC effective number of bits (ENOB) is required to accommodatehigher PAPR, and extra oversampling in the baseband DSP, and Tx DAC maybe needed to accommodate wider channel bandwidth. All of these areimpacted by waveform, and therefore should be carefully evaluated.

Carrier frequency offset and phase noise is much higher in spectrumbeyond 52.6 GHz because of imperfections of PAs and crystal oscillatorsare more severe than that of lower bands. In addition, Dopplershift/spread is also larger with the carrier frequency increasing. As aresult, robustness on frequency offset and phase noise for systemsoperating on bands above 52.6 GHz may be particularly important.Increasing the subcarrier spacing for a CP-OFDM waveform to better copewith increased phase noise could be investigated. For other potentialwaveforms, impact from phase noise and ability to robustly handle phasenoise should be investigated.

One candidate of the waveform (e.g., for downlink) exhibiting low PAPRproperties is the DFTS-OFDM waveform that is currently being used in NRuplink, which may ameliorate PAPR issues for the downlink in the highfrequency bands.

Another candidate waveform falls under the general categories of singlecarrier (SC) modulation. FIG. 1 shows an exemplary scheme for atransmitter block diagram providing SC modulation. The guard interval(GI) may contain cyclic prefix of the input modulation symbol sequence,a sequence known to both transmitter and receiver, or zero power symbolsto separate consecutive blocks of modulation symbols. After the GIinsertion, the sequence is up-sampled (↑N), filtered and down-sampled(↓M) to the target sampling rate for transmission.

For any of the waveform candidates under consideration for the higherfrequency bands (including the DFTS-OFDM and SC waveforms discussed inthe above), an exemplary frame structure is shown in FIG. 2 . In theillustration, samples of the modulation symbols generated for example asindicated in FIG. 1 or with a SC-FDMA-based scheme are organized inblock symbols (or allocation units). For the OFDM and the DFTS-OFDMwaveforms, such a block symbol may be referred to as an OFDM symbol. Forease of presentation and specification convention, such block symbol mayalso be referred to as an OFDM symbol for a SC waveform even when no DFToperation is involved in said SC waveform transmitter.

The frequency bands above 52.6 GHz may comprise various combinations of

-   -   Primary access by a mobile system    -   Secondary access by a mobile system    -   License-exempt access by a mobile system

Regulatory regimes in different parts of the world may impose differentuse restriction and requirements to protect other adjacent (e.g.,non-mobile) systems.

Total output power and output power spectral density (PSD) may beindividually or both imposed by applicable regulations in differentregulatory regions. For instance, the current Europe regulation for57-66 GHz is that the maximum mean EIRP is 13 dBm per MHz and the maxmean EIRP is 40 dBm. As another example, the US regulation for 57-71 GHzsets the maximum mean EIRP to 40 dBm, which can be used with a bandwidthof at least 100 MHz. The US regulation for 71-76 and 81-86 GHz is themaximum EIRP is 55 dBm and the maximum power spectral density is 21.76dBm per 100 MHz.

Furthermore, radio signals at higher frequency bands suffer moreattenuation in propagation. The path loss is proportional to the secondorder of the carrier frequency. As discussed in previous paragraphs,devices at such high frequency bands have limitation regardinggenerating high output power. Based on a survey of various device specs,it can be observed that the available power decreases roughlyproportional to the carrier frequency. Taking both factors into account,one can expect the received power for high frequency band signals toscale inversely with the third order of the carrier frequency relativeto a lower frequency band signal at the same distance from thetransmitters. For instance, one can expect the received power for a 60GHz band signal to be roughly 30 dB lower than a 6 GHz band signal atthe same distance from the transmitter. To combat such severe losses ofsignal power, many different solutions may be needed to be designed andincorporated together.

Due to severe power and power spectral density limitations, controlchannels for high frequency bands may be adapted to balance the coherentcombining gains over longer transmission duration and the frequencydiversity gains over wider bandwidth.

Similar to lower band NR, UEs will need to perform blind decoding tosearch for the PDCCH sent by the base station, since the UEs do not knowwhat aggregation levels are used by the base station. Performing channelestimation is one of the first function toward decoding the candidatePDCCH. For Rel-15 NR, UEs are capable of performing channel estimationon 56, 48 and 32 CCEs for 30, 60 and 120 kHz sub-carrier spacings,respectively. For high frequency bands using sub-carrier spacing of 960kHz or higher, the number of CCEs that can be estimated by the UE duringthe PDCCH candidate search will be severely limited. Using62.6×2^(−0.32μ) as an estimate for the number of CCEs supported by theUE (which is optimized to minimize the mean absolute deviation from thecurrent supported number of CCEs), the number of CCEs may be as low as16, 13 and 10 for 960, 1920 and 3840 kHz sub-carrier spacings,respectively.

In the LTE and NR systems, a PDCCH may be limited to carry one DL or oneUL scheduling control information. For the high frequency band NRsystem, it is possible to follow such an approach. For instance, thebase station can transmit to the UE a first PDCCH carrying the ULscheduling information which is followed by a second PDCCH carrying theDL scheduling information. However, the existing approach may have thefollowing drawbacks when applied directly for the high frequency bandsystems. By sending two independent PDCCHs, the UE may need to performchannel estimation on double amount of CCEs. For a PDCCH of a certainduration, the optimal appropriation of the resource between DM-RS andcoded payloads may be needed to be determined systematically.

There are proposed approaches providing improved control channelcoverage, in particular for high frequency systems. For any of thewaveform candidates under consideration for the higher frequency bands(including the DFTS-OFDM and SC waveforms discussed in the above), ablock of samples of the modulation symbols may be generally referred toas constituting an OFDM symbol (even when no DFT operation is involvedin the transmitter), or may be referred to as block symbol or allocationunit. A resource element group (REG) may be considered to comprise, orconsist of, 12 subcarriers*1 OFDM symbol (assuming a waveform utilisingsub-carriers, otherwise the frequency extension may correspond to thetransmission bandwidth). Sometimes, this may be loosely referred to as aresource block (RB) or physical resource block (PRB) or common resourceblock (CRB). A REG bundle may comprise an integer number, e.g. either 2,3, or 6, contiguous (in frequency) REGs. A REG bundle may be consideredto define the precoder granularity and/or interleaving granularity forthe resources in a CORESET. A CCE may be defined as 6 REGs. Sometimes,this is loosely referred to as 6 RBs/PRBs/CRBs. However, specificnumbers are used to illustrate possible approaches; different numbersand sizes may be used, e.g. for different waveforms and/orhigh-frequency carriers.

There may be considered PDCCH aggregation levels with different durationand bandwidth combinations; each PDCCH aggregation level may represent acandidate for control signaling out of a set of control signalingsand/or may represent a signaling characteristic from a set of signalingcharacteristics.

Given the limited transmit and received signal powers, PDCCHs targetingdifferent coverage ranges have different durations. Longer PDCCHdurations allow the signal to combine coherently over time to accumulatemore energy.

Alternatively, or additionally, PDCCHs of different durations may occupydifferent amount of frequency resources. Given the limited transmit andreceived signal powers, spreading the power over more frequency resourcemay allow the use of lower coding rates, but can impact the channelestimation accuracy. With inaccurate channel estimates, performance willdegrade since signals are not correctly combined. Hence, an optimal sizeof frequency resources can be selected for a PDCCH of a certain durationto achieve best performance.

As one nonlimiting exemplary shown in table 4, a PDCCH in a CORESET orsearch space may have different durations, e.g., of either 2, 4, 7 or 14OFDM symbols or allocation units. Thus, different amounts of energy canbe accumulated to combat noise and interference. Furthermore, differentamounts of frequency domain resources may be used in conjunction withdifferent durations for different PDCCHs. Combinations of PDCCHbandwidths and durations of different aggregation levels may bespecified in the network's protocol descriptions.

Here, following the convention of LTE and NR, a PDCCH of a higheraggregation level has better coverage than a PDCCH of lower aggregationlevel. That is, for instance, aggregation level D in table 4 correspondsto a higher aggregation level than aggregation level A since the formercan withstand more coupling loss than the later.

TABLE 4 Exemplary high frequency band PDCCHs targeting differentcoverage ranges for 960 kHz sub-carrier spacing in a 60 GHz band. PDCCHaggregation Bandwidth Max coupling loss level Duration [OS] [MHz] [dB]Aggregation level A 2 553 118.0 Aggregation level B 4 276 121.0Aggregation level C 7 138 122.5 Aggregation level D 14 138 124.5

Alternatively, or additionally, PDCCH aggregation levels with differentduration and bandwidth combinations under PSD limit may be considered.In certain regulatory regimes, transmit power spectral density (PSD) isregulated in addition to total transmit power. Under such PSD limit, adevice will not be able transmit at higher power without spreading thesignal over wider bandwidth. The bandwidth and duration combination of aPDCCH may be jointly defined, e.g. with a minimum bandwidth. Saidminimum bandwidth may depend on one or more of (1) the maximum PSD setby regulation, (2) maximum transmit power set by regulation, (3) and/ordevice's maximum transmit power capability.

Combinations of PDCCH bandwidths and durations of different aggregationlevels may be provided and/or configured and/or indicated by a networkcoordination node, for example a radio node or higher layer node. Onenonlimiting example for a network coordination node is a gNB or eNB in3GPP NR or LTE networks. Another nonlimiting example of networkcoordination node is an access point device in IEEE 802.11 networks.

Combinations of PDCCH bandwidths and durations of different aggregationlevels may be broadcast by the network, e.g. a network coordinationnode. One nonlimiting example of such broadcast is the systeminformation block (SIB) signaling in an NR network. In the case wheresaid broadcast signal is scheduled by a PDCCH (e.g., scheduling abroadcast data signaling, in particular on a PDSCH or PSSCH), thebandwidth and duration of said scheduling PDCCH may be specified in thenetwork's protocol descriptions.

For a wireless communication device operating on more than onecommunication carrier (e.g., one primary carrier and at least onesecondary carrier, for example), the combinations of PDCCH bandwidthsand durations of different aggregation levels for a secondary carriercan be provided to the UE via higher layer configuration. Onenonlimiting example of such higher layer configuration is the radioresource control (RRC) layer signaling, or MAC layer signaling.

Alternatively, or additionally, PDCCH candidates with nested DM-RSlocations may be considered. To maintain low PAPR characteristic in thetransmission signals, demodulation reference symbols (DM-RS) may beseparated from the coded modulation symbols of the control information(PDCCH or DCI) into different block symbol or symbol blocks. Forinstance, DMRS may be carried in the first symbol block or block symbol,and coded control information can be carried in the second symbol blockor block symbol of a length-2 PDCCH.

Similar to lower band NR, UEs will need to perform blind decoding tosearch for the PDCCH sent by the base station since the UEs do not knowwhat aggregation levels are used by the base station. Performing channelestimation is one of the first function toward decoding the candidatePDCCH. For Rel-15 NR, UEs are capable of performing channel estimationon 56, 48 and 32 CCEs for 30, 60 and 120 kHz sub-carrier spacings,respectively. For high frequency bands using sub-carrier spacing of 960kHz or higher, the number of CCEs that can be estimated by the UE duringthe PDCCH candidate search will be severely limited. The DM-RS locationsof different PDCCH candidates at different aggregation levels may benested, e.g. such that a UE (or other wireless device) can reuse channelestimation performed for one aggregation level toward the processing ofanother aggregation level.

Nonlimiting exemplary placements of candidate PDCCHs are illustrated inFIGS. 3 and 4 . The frequency resource used by a PDCCH candidate of ahigher aggregation level may be a subset of that used by a PDCCHcandidate of a lower aggregation level. The overlapping frequencyresources (and/or time resource/s) used by PDCCHs of differentaggregation levels may start at the same frequency location as shown inFIG. 4 , or at different frequency locations as shown in FIG. 3 . SuchPDCCH candidate placement may limit the number of CCEs to estimate for areceiving device like a wireless device. After receiving the firstsymbol block or block symbol or allocation unit, the UE may estimate thechannel response first on the resource corresponding the PDCCH candidatewith narrowest bandwidth. The UE may then gradually extend the estimatedchannel responses to PDCCH candidates with wider bandwidths (e.g.,assuming it does not identify a valid PDCCH candidate).

In the LTE and NR systems, a PDCCH is limited to carry one DL or one ULscheduling control information. For the high frequency band NR system,it is possible to follow such an approach. For instance, the basestation can transmit to the UE a first PDCCH carrying the UL schedulinginformation which is followed by a second PDCCH carrying the DLscheduling information.

However, the existing approach may have the following drawbacks whenapplied directly for the high frequency band systems. By sending twoindependent PDCCHs, the UE may need to perform channel estimation ondouble amount of CCEs. Furthermore, if both DCIs are combined andencoded together, better coding gains may be obtained especially if theDM-RS overhead can be reduced at the same time.

Hence, multiple control information or messages targeting the same UEmay be concatenated. The combined control information can be thenprocessed using existing PDCCH encoding, modulation and transmissionprocedures. In general, a control information message representing ascheduling grant and a scheduling assignment may be considered, e.g.including scheduling information pertaining to data signaling to bereceived by the receiver of the control information message andscheduling data signaling to be transmitted by this receiver, e.g. ondifferent time and/or frequency resources, e.g. in different allocationunits.

As one nonlimiting example, using two length-2 PDCCHs to carry two DCIsto a UE according to current NR approach will have two symbol blocks orblock symbols or allocation units carrying DM-RS and one each to carryeach of the coded DCI. Instead, a single length-4 PDCCH can be used tocarry both DCIs. In this case, only one symbol block or block symbol orallocation unit may be used to carry DM-RS, while three may be used tocarry coded DCI. As result, the new approach may achieve linkperformance advantage of 1.5 dB. Leftover bits or resources may forexample be used for additional or improved coding, e.g. FEC or errorcorrection coding, and/or for repetition of information bits or codedbits.

In general, the number and/or location of DM-RS symbol block/s (and/orallocation unit/s or modulation symbols) for a given PDCCH duration maybe considered. A demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) (e.g.,represented by a modulation symbol or a symbol or signal of a sequenceof DMRS symbols or signals) may in general used by the receiver toestimate the channel associated with a physical channel fordemodulation. Locations and number of DM-RS symbols are critical playersin DM-RS design. Given a PDCCH duration, reducing the number of DM-RSs(or DM-RS overhead) results in lower coding rates, but can impactchannel estimation accuracy negatively. According to the teaching of theembodiment, there is an optimal number of DM-RS for a given PDCCHduration. An optimised number of DM-RS can be obtained based on and/orby a function of the number of OFDM symbols (or block symbols orallocation units), e.g. divided by a constant. One nonlimiting exampleof the constant is four. One nonlimiting example of the function is aceiling function. Another nonlimiting example of the function is a floorfunction.

Location of DM-RS symbols may be relevant. Two exemplary structures maybe considered for DM-RS symbols locations. First, all DM-RS symbols maybe transmitted at the beginning of the slot (or allocation unit, orgroup of allocation units), which enables the early estimation of thechannel. Second, DM-RS may follow a comb pilot structure, which isbeneficial for efficient, high-performance channel estimation. At thesame time, preserving the same structure when frequency hopping may beenabled.

FIG. 5 schematically shows a radio node, in particular a wireless deviceor terminal 10 or a UE (User Equipment). Radio node 10 comprisesprocessing circuitry (which may also be referred to as controlcircuitry) 20, which may comprise a controller connected to a memory.Any module of the radio node 10, e.g. a communicating module ordetermining module, may be implemented in and/or executable by, theprocessing circuitry 20, in particular as module in the controller.Radio node 10 also comprises radio circuitry 22 providing receiving andtransmitting or transceiving functionality (e.g., one or moretransmitters and/or receivers and/or transceivers), the radio circuitry22 being connected or connectable to the processing circuitry. Anantenna circuitry 24 of the radio node 10 is connected or connectable tothe radio circuitry 22 to collect or send and/or amplify signals. Radiocircuitry 22 and the processing circuitry 20 controlling it areconfigured for cellular communication with a network, e.g. a RAN asdescribed herein, and/or for sidelink communication (which may be withincoverage of the cellular network, or out of coverage; and/or may beconsidered non-cellular communication and/or be associated to anon-cellular wireless communication network). Radio node 10 maygenerally be adapted to carry out any of the methods of operating aradio node like terminal or UE disclosed herein; in particular, it maycomprise corresponding circuitry, e.g. processing circuitry, and/ormodules, e.g. software modules. It may be considered that the radio node10 comprises, and/or is connected or connectable, to a power supply.

FIG. 6 schematically show a radio node 100, which may in particular beimplemented as a network node 100, for example an eNB or gNB or similarfor NR. Radio node 100 comprises processing circuitry (which may also bereferred to as control circuitry) 120, which may comprise a controllerconnected to a memory. Any module, e.g. transmitting module and/orreceiving module and/or configuring module of the node 100 may beimplemented in and/or executable by the processing circuitry 120. Theprocessing circuitry 120 is connected to control radio circuitry 122 ofthe node 100, which provides receiver and transmitter and/or transceiverfunctionality (e.g., comprising one or more transmitters and/orreceivers and/or transceivers). An antenna circuitry 124 may beconnected or connectable to radio circuitry 122 for signal reception ortransmittance and/or amplification. Node 100 may be adapted to carry outany of the methods for operating a radio node or network node disclosedherein; in particular, it may comprise corresponding circuitry, e.g.processing circuitry, and/or modules. The antenna circuitry 124 may beconnected to and/or comprise an antenna array. The node 100,respectively its circuitry, may be adapted to perform any of the methodsof operating a network node or a radio node as described herein; inparticular, it may comprise corresponding circuitry, e.g. processingcircuitry, and/or modules. The radio node 100 may generally comprisecommunication circuitry, e.g. for communication with another networknode, like a radio node, and/or with a core network and/or an internetor local net, in particular with an information system, which mayprovide information and/or data to be transmitted to a user equipment.

In general, a block symbol may represent and/or correspond to anextension in time domain, e.g. a time interval. A block symbol duration(the length of the time interval) may correspond to the duration of anOFDM symbol or a corresponding duration, and/or may be based and/ordefined by a subcarrier spacing used (e.g., based on the numerology) orequivalent, and/or may correspond to the duration of a modulation symbol(e.g., for OFDM or similar frequency domain multiplexed types ofsignaling). It may be considered that a block symbol comprises aplurality of modulation symbols, e.g. based on a subcarrier spacingand/or numerology or equivalent, in particular for time domainmultiplexed types (on the symbol level for a single transmitter) ofsignaling like single-carrier based signaling, e.g. SC-FDE or SC-FDMA(in particular, FDF-SC-FDMA or pulse-shaped SC-FDMA). The number ofsymbols may be based on and/or defined by the number of subcarrier to beDFTS-spread (for SC-FDMA) and/or be based on a number of FFT samples,e.g. for spreading and/or mapping, and/or equivalent, and/or may bepredefined and/or configured or configurable. A block symbol in thiscontext may comprise and/or contain a plurality of individual modulationsymbols, which may be for example 1000 or more, or 3000 or more, or 3300or more. The number of modulation symbols in a block symbol may be basedand/or be dependent on a bandwidth scheduled for transmission ofsignaling in the block symbol. A block symbol and/or a number of blocksymbols (an integer smaller than 20, e.g. equal to or smaller than 14 or7 or 4 or 2 or a flexible number) may be a unit (e.g., allocation unit)used or usable or intended e.g. for scheduling and/or allocation ofresources, in particular in time domain. To a block symbol (e.g.,scheduled or allocated) and/or block symbol group and/or allocationunit, there may be associated a frequency range and/or frequency domainallocation and/or bandwidth allocated for transmission.

An allocation unit, and/or a block symbol, may be associated to aspecific (e.g., physical) channel and/or specific type of signaling, forexample reference signaling. In some cases, there may be a block symbolassociated to a channel that also is associated to a form of referencesignaling and/or pilot signaling and/or tracking signaling associated tothe channel, for example for timing purposes and/or decoding purposes(such signaling may comprise a low number of modulation symbols and/orresource elements of a block symbol, e.g. less than 10% or less than 5%or less than 1% of the modulation symbols and/or resource elements in ablock symbol). To a block symbol, there may be associated resourceelements; a resource element may be represented in time/frequencydomain, e.g. by the smallest frequency unit carrying or mapped to (e.g.,a subcarrier) in frequency domain and the duration of a modulationsymbol in time domain. A block symbol may comprise, and/or to a blocksymbol may be associated, a structure allowing and/or comprising anumber of modulation symbols, and/or association to one or more channels(and/or the structure may dependent on the channel the block symbol isassociated to and/or is allocated or used for), and/or referencesignaling (e.g., as discussed above), and/or one or more guard periodsand/or transient periods, and/or one or more affixes (e.g., a prefixand/or suffix and/or one or more infixes (entered inside the blocksymbol)), in particular a cyclic prefix and/or suffix and/or infix. Acyclic affix may represent a repetition of signaling and/or modulationsymbol/s used in the block symbol, with possible slight amendments tothe signaling structure of the affix to provide a smooth and/orcontinuous and/or differentiable connection between affix signaling andsignaling of modulation symbols associated to the content of the blocksymbol (e.g., channel and/or reference signaling structure). In somecases, in particular some OFDM-based waveforms, an affix may be includedinto a modulation symbol. In other cases, e.g. some single carrier-basedwaveforms, an affix may be represented by a sequence of modulationsymbols within the block symbol. It may be considered that in some casesa block symbol is defined and/or used in the context of the associatedstructure.

Communicating may comprise transmitting or receiving. It may beconsidered that communicating like transmitting signaling is based on aSC-FDM based waveform, and/or corresponds to a Frequency Domain Filtered(FDF) DFTS-OFDM waveform. However, the approaches may be applied to aSingle Carrier based waveform, e.g. a SC-FDM or SC-FDE-waveform, whichmay be pulse-shaped/FDF-based. It should be noted that SC-FDM may beconsidered DFT-spread OFDM, such that SC-FDM and DFTS-OFDM may be usedinterchangeably. Alternatively, or additionally, the signaling (e.g.,first signaling and/or second signaling) and/or beam/s (in particular,the first received beam and/or second received beam) may be based on awaveform with CP or comparable guard time. The received beam and thetransmission beam of the first beam pair may have the same (or similar)or different angular and/or spatial extensions; the received beam andthe transmission beam of the second beam pair may have the same (orsimilar) or different angular and/or spatial extensions. It may beconsidered that the received beam and/or transmission beam of the firstand/or second beam pair have angular extension of 20 degrees or less, or15 degrees or less, or 10 or 5 degrees or less, at least in one ofhorizontal or vertical direction, or both; different beams may havedifferent angular extensions. An extended guard interval or switchingprotection interval may have a duration corresponding to essentially orat least N CP (cyclic prefix) durations or equivalent duration, whereinN may be 2, or 3 or 4. An equivalent to a CP duration may represent theCP duration associated to signaling with CP (e.g., SC-FDM-based orOFDM-based) for a waveform without CP with the same or similar symboltime duration as the signaling with CP. Pulse-shaping (and/or performingFDF for) a modulation symbol and/or signaling, e.g. associated to afirst subcarrier or bandwidth, may comprise mapping the modulationsymbol (and/or the sample associated to it after FFT) to an associatedsecond subcarrier or part of the bandwidth, and/or applying a shapingoperation regarding the power and/or amplitude and/or phase of themodulation symbol on the first subcarrier and the second subcarrier,wherein the shaping operation may be according to a shaping function.Pulse-shaping signaling may comprise pulse-shaping one or more symbols;pulse-shaped signaling may in general comprise at least one pulse-shapedsymbol. Pulse-shaping may be performed based on a Nyquist-filter. It maybe considered that pulse-shaping is performed based on periodicallyextending a frequency distribution of modulation symbols (and/orassociated samples after FFT) over a first number of subcarrier to alarger, second number of subcarriers, wherein a subset of the firstnumber of subcarriers from one end of the frequency distribution isappended at the other end of the first number of subcarriers.

In some variants, communicating may be based on a numerology (which may,e.g., be represented by and/or correspond to and/or indicate asubcarrier spacing and/or symbol time length) and/or an SC-FDM basedwaveform (including a FDF-DFTS-FDM based waveform) or a single-carrierbased waveform. Whether to use pulse-shaping or FDF on a SC-FDM orSC-based waveform may depend on the modulation scheme (e.g., MCS) used.Such waveforms may utilise a cyclic prefix and/or benefit particularlyfrom the described approaches. Communicating may comprise and/or bebased on beamforming, e.g. transmission beamforming and/or receptionbeamforming, respectively. It may be considered that a beam is producedby performing analog beamforming to provide the beam, e.g. a beamcorresponding to a reference beam. Thus, signaling may be adapted, e.g.based on movement of the communication partner. A beam may for examplebe produced by performing analog beamforming to provide a beamcorresponding to a reference beam. This allows efficient postprocessingof a digitally formed beam, without requiring changes to a digitalbeamforming chain and/or without requiring changes to a standarddefining beam forming precoders. In general, a beam may be produced byhybrid beamforming, and/or by digital beamforming, e.g. based on aprecoder. This facilitates easy processing of beams, and/or limits thenumber of power amplifiers/ADC/DCA required for antenna arrangements. Itmay be considered that a beam is produced by hybrid beamforming, e.g. byanalog beamforming performed on a beam representation or beam formedbased on digital beamforming. Monitoring and/or performing cell searchmay be based on reception beamforming, e.g. analog or digital or hybridreception beamforming. The numerology may determine the length of asymbol time interval and/or the duration of a cyclic prefix. Theapproaches described herein are particularly suitable to SC-FDM, toensure orthogonality, in particular subcarrier orthogonality, incorresponding systems, but may be used for other waveforms.Communicating may comprise utilising a waveform with cyclic prefix. Thecyclic prefix may be based on a numerology, and may help keepingsignaling orthogonal. Communicating may comprise, and/or be based onperforming cell search, e.g. for a wireless device or terminal, or maycomprise transmitting cell identifying signaling and/or a selectionindication, based on which a radio node receiving the selectionindication may select a signaling bandwidth from a set of signalingbandwidths for performing cell search.

A beam or beam pair may in general be targeted at one radio node, or agroup of radio nodes and/or an area including one or more radio nodes.In many cases, a beam or beam pair may be receiver-specific (e.g.,UE-specific), such that only one radio node is served per beam/beampair. A beam pair switch or switch of received beam (e.g., by using adifferent reception beam) and/or transmission beam may be performed at aborder of a transmission timing structure, e.g. a slot border, or withina slot, for example between symbols Some tuning of radio circuitry, e.g.for receiving and/or transmitting, may be performed. Beam pair switchingmay comprise switching from a second received beam to a first receivedbeam, and/or from a second transmission beam to a first transmissionbeam. Switching may comprise inserting a guard period to cover retuningtime; however, circuitry may be adapted to switch sufficiently quicklyto essentially be instantaneous; this may in particular be the case whendigital reception beamforming is used to switch reception beams forswitching received beams.

A reference beam may be a beam comprising reference signaling, based onwhich for example a of beam signaling characteristics may be determined,e.g. measured and/or estimated. A signaling beam may comprise signalinglike control signaling and/or data signaling and/or reference signaling.A reference beam may be transmitted by a source or transmitting radionode, in which case one or more beam signaling characteristics may bereported to it from a receiver, e.g. a wireless device. However, in somecases it may be received by the radio node from another radio node orwireless device. In this case, one or more beam signalingcharacteristics may be determined by the radio node. A signaling beammay be a transmission beam, or a reception beam. A set of signalingcharacteristics may comprise a plurality of subsets of beam signalingcharacteristics, each subset pertaining to a different reference beam.Thus, a reference beam may be associated to different beam signalingcharacteristics.

A beam signaling characteristic, respectively a set of suchcharacteristics, may represent and/or indicate a signal strength and/orsignal quality of a beam and/or a delay characteristic and/or beassociated with received and/or measured signaling carried on a beam.Beam signaling characteristics and/or delay characteristics may inparticular pertain to, and/or indicate, a number and/or list and/ororder of beams with best (e.g., lowest mean delay and/or lowestspread/range) timing or delay spread, and/or of strongest and/or bestquality beams, e.g. with associated delay spread. A beam signalingcharacteristic may be based on measurement/s performed on referencesignaling carried on the reference beam it pertains to. Themeasurement/s may be performed by the radio node, or another node orwireless device. The use of reference signaling allows improved accuracyand/or gauging of the measurements. In some cases, a beam and/or beampair may be represented by a beam identity indication, e.g. a beam orbeam pair number. Such an indication may be represented by one or moresignaling sequences (e.g., a specific reference signaling sequences orsequences), which may be transmitted on the beam and/or beam pair,and/or a signaling characteristic and/or a resource/s used (e.g.,time/frequency and/or code) and/or a specific RNTI (e.g., used forscrambling a CRC for some messages or transmissions) and/or byinformation provided in signaling, e.g. control signaling and/or systemsignaling, on the beam and/or beam pair, e.g. encoded and/or provided inan information field or as information element in some form of messageof signaling, e.g. DCI and/or MAC and/or RRC signaling.

A reference beam may in general be one of a set of reference beams, thesecond set of reference beams being associated to the set of signalingbeams. The sets being associated may refer to at least one beam of thefirst set being associated and/or corresponding to the second set (orvice versa), e.g. being based on it, for example by having the sameanalog or digital beamforming parameters and/or precoder and/or the sameshape before analog beamforming, and/or being a modified form thereof,e.g. by performing additional analog beamforming. The set of signalingbeams may be referred to as a first set of beams, a set of correspondingreference beams may be referred to as second set of beams.

In some variants, a reference beam and/or reference beams and/orreference signaling may correspond to and/or carry random accesssignaling, e.g. a random access preamble. Such a reference beam orsignaling may be transmitted by another radio node. The signaling mayindicate which beam is used for transmitting. Alternatively, thereference beams may be beams receiving the random access signaling.Random access signaling may be used for initial connection to the radionode and/or a cell provided by the radio node, and/or for reconnection.Utilising random access signaling facilitates quick and early beamselection. The random access signaling may be on a random accesschannel, e.g. based on broadcast information provided by the radio node(the radio node performing the beam selection), e.g. withsynchronisation signaling (e.g., SSB block and/or associated thereto).The reference signaling may correspond to synchronisation signaling,e.g. transmitted by the radio node in a plurality of beams. Thecharacteristics may be reported on by a node receiving thesynchronisation signaling, e.g. in a random access process, e.g. a msg3for contention resolution, which may be transmitted on a physical uplinkshared channel based on a resource allocation provided by the radionode.

A delay characteristic (which may correspond to delay spreadinformation) and/or a measurement report may represent and/or indicateat least one of mean delay, and/or delay spread, and/or delaydistribution, and/or delay spread distribution, and/or delay spreadrange, and/or relative delay spread, and/or energy (or power)distribution, and/or impulse response to received signaling, and/or thepower delay profile of the received signals, and/or power delay profilerelated parameters of the received signal. A mean delay may representthe mean value and/or an averaged value of the delay spread, which maybe weighted or unweighted. A distribution may be distribution overtime/delay, e.g. of received power and/or energy of a signal. A rangemay indicate an interval of the delay spread distribution overtime/delay, which may cover a predetermined percentage of the delayspread respective received energy or power, e.g. 50% or more, 75% ormore, 90% or more, or 100%. A relative delay spread may indicate arelation to a threshold delay, e.g. of the mean delay, and/or a shiftrelative to an expected and/or configured timing, e.g. a timing at whichthe signaling would have been expected based on the scheduling, and/or arelation to a cyclic prefix duration (which may be considered on form ofa threshold). Energy distribution or power distribution may pertain tothe energy or power received over the time interval of the delay spread.A power delay profile may pertain to representations of the receivedsignals, or the received signals energy/power, across time/delay. Powerdelay profile related parameters may pertain to metrics computed fromthe power delay profile. Different values and forms of delay spreadinformation and/or report may be used, allowing a wide range ofcapabilities. The kind of information represented by a measurementreport may be predefined, or be configured or configurable, e.g. with ameasurement configuration and/or reference signaling configuration, inparticular with higher layer signaling like RRC or MAC signaling and/orphysical layer signaling like DCI signaling.

In general, different beam pair may differ in at least one beam; forexample, a beam pair using a first received beam and a firsttransmission beam may be considered to be different from a second beampair using the first received beam and a second transmission beam. Atransmission beam using no precoding and/or beamforming, for exampleusing the natural antenna profile, may be considered as a special formof transmission beam of a transmission beam pair. A beam may beindicated to a radio node by a transmitter with a beam indication and/ora configuration, which for example may indicate beam parameters and/ortime/frequency resources associated to the beam and/or a transmissionmode and/or antenna profile and/or antenna port and/or precoderassociated to the beam. Different beams may be provided with differentcontent, for example different received beams may carry differentsignaling; however, there may be considered cases in which differentbeams carry the same signaling, for example the same data signalingand/or reference signaling. The beams may be transmitted by the samenode and/or transmission point and/or antenna arrangement, or bydifferent nodes and/or transmission points and/or antenna arrangements.

Communicating utilising a beam pair or a beam may comprise receivingsignaling on a received beam (which may be a beam of a beam pair),and/or transmitting signaling on a beam, e.g. a beam of a beam pair. Thefollowing terms are to be interpreted from the point of view of thereferred radio node: a received beam may be a beam carrying signalingreceived by the radio node (for reception, the radio node may use areception beam, e.g. directed to the received beam, or benon-beamformed). A transmission beam may be a beam used by the radionode to transmit signaling. A beam pair may consist of a received beamand a transmission beam. The transmission beam and the received beam ofa beam pair may be associated to each and/or correspond to each other,e.g. such that signaling on the received beam and signaling on atransmission beam travel essentially the same path (but in oppositedirections), e.g. at least in a stationary or almost stationarycondition. It should be noted that the terms “first” and “second” do notnecessarily denote an order in time; a second signaling may be receivedand/or transmitted before, or in some cases simultaneous to, firstsignaling, or vice versa. The received beam and transmission beam of abeam pair may be on the same carrier or frequency range or bandwidthpart, e.g. in a TDD operation; however, variants with FDD may beconsidered as well. Different beam pairs may operate on the samefrequency ranges or carriers or bandwidth parts (e.g., such thattransmission beams operate on the same frequency range or carriers orbandwidth part, and received beams on the same frequency range orcarriers or bandwidth part (the transmission beam and received beams maybe on the same or different ranges or carriers or BWPs). Communicatingutilizing a first beam pair and/or first beam may be based on, and/orcomprise, switching from the second beam pair or second beam to thefirst beam pair or first beam for communicating. The switching may becontrolled by the network, for example a network node (which may be thesource or transmitter of the received beam of the first beam pair and/orsecond beam pair, or be associated thereto, for example associatedtransmission points or nodes in dual connectivity). Such controlling maycomprise transmitting control signaling, e.g. physical layer signalingand/or higher layer signaling. In some cases, the switching may beperformed by the radio node without additional control signaling, forexample based on measurements on signal quality and/or signal strengthof beam pairs (e.g., of first and second received beams), in particularthe first beam pair and/or the second beam pair. For example, it may beswitched to the first beam pair (or first beam) if the signal quality orsignal strength measured on the second beam pair (or second beam) isconsidered to be insufficient, and/or worse than correspondingmeasurements on the first beam pair indicate. Measurements performed ona beam pair (or beam) may in particular comprise measurements performedon a received beam of the beam pair. It may be considered that thetiming indication may be determined before switching from the secondbeam pair to the first beam pair for communicating. Thus, thesynchronization may be in place 8 and/or the timing indication may beavailable for synchronising) when starting communication utilizing thefirst beam pair or first beam. However, in some cases the timingindication may be determined after switching to the first beam pair orfirst beam. This may be in particular useful if first signaling isexpected to be received after the switching only, for example based on aperiodicity or scheduled timing of suitable reference signaling on thefirst beam pair, e.g. first received beam.

In some variants, reference signaling may be and/or comprise CSI-RS,e.g. transmitted by the network node. In other variants, the referencesignaling may be transmitted by a UE, e.g. to a network node or otherUE, in which case it may comprise and/or be Sounding ReferenceSignaling. Other, e.g. new, forms of reference signaling may beconsidered and/or used. In general, a modulation symbol of referencesignaling respectively a resource element carrying it may be associatedto a cyclic prefix.

Data signaling may be on a data channel, for example on a PDSCH orPSSCH, or on a dedicated data channel, e.g. for low latency and/or highreliability, e.g. a URLLC channel. Control signaling may be on a controlchannel, for example on a common control channel or a PDCCH or PSCCH,and/or comprise one or more DCI messages or SCI messages. Referencesignaling may be associated to control signaling and/or data signaling,e.g. DM-RS and/or PT-RS.

Reference signaling, for example, may comprise DM-RS and/or pilotsignaling and/or discovery signaling and/or synchronisation signalingand/or sounding signaling and/or phase tracking signaling and/orcell-specific reference signaling and/or user-specific signaling, inparticular CSI-RS. Reference signaling in general may be signaling withone or more signaling characteristics, in particular transmission powerand/or sequence of modulation symbols and/or resource distributionand/or phase distribution known to the receiver. Thus, the receiver canuse the reference signaling as a reference and/or for training and/orfor compensation. The receiver can be informed about the referencesignaling by the transmitter, e.g. being configured and/or signalingwith control signaling, in particular physical layer signaling and/orhigher layer signaling (e.g., DCI and/or RRC signaling), and/or maydetermine the corresponding information itself, e.g. a network nodeconfiguring a UE to transmit reference signaling. Reference signalingmay be signaling comprising one or more reference symbols and/orstructures. Reference signaling may be adapted for gauging and/orestimating and/or representing transmission conditions, e.g. channelconditions and/or transmission path conditions and/or channel (or signalor transmission) quality. It may be considered that the transmissioncharacteristics (e.g., signal strength and/or form and/or modulationand/or timing) of reference signaling are available for both transmitterand receiver of the signaling (e.g., due to being predefined and/orconfigured or configurable and/or being communicated). Different typesof reference signaling may be considered, e.g. pertaining to uplink,downlink or sidelink, cell-specific (in particular, cell-wide, e.g.,CRS) or device or user specific (addressed to a specific target or userequipment, e.g., CSI-RS), demodulation-related (e.g., DMRS) and/orsignal strength related, e.g. power-related or energy-related oramplitude-related (e.g., SRS or pilot signaling) and/or phase-related,etc.

References to specific resource structures like an allocation unitand/or block symbol and/or block symbol group and/or transmission timingstructure and/or symbol and/or slot and/or mini-slot and/or subcarrierand/or carrier may pertain to a specific numerology, which may bepredefined and/or configured or configurable. A transmission timingstructure may represent a time interval, which may cover one or moresymbols. Some examples of a transmission timing structure aretransmission time interval (TTI), subframe, slot and mini-slot. A slotmay comprise a predetermined, e.g. predefined and/or configured orconfigurable, number of symbols, e.g. 6 or 7, or 12 or 14. A mini-slotmay comprise a number of symbols (which may in particular beconfigurable or configured) smaller than the number of symbols of aslot, in particular 1, 2, 3 or 4, or more symbols, e.g. less symbolsthan symbols in a slot. A transmission timing structure may cover a timeinterval of a specific length, which may be dependent on symbol timelength and/or cyclic prefix used. A transmission timing structure maypertain to, and/or cover, a specific time interval in a time stream,e.g. synchronized for communication. Timing structures used and/orscheduled for transmission, e.g. slot and/or mini-slots, may bescheduled in relation to, and/or synchronized to, a timing structureprovided and/or defined by other transmission timing structures. Suchtransmission timing structures may define a timing grid, e.g., withsymbol time intervals within individual structures representing thesmallest timing units. Such a timing grid may for example be defined byslots or subframes (wherein in some cases, subframes may be consideredspecific variants of slots). A transmission timing structure may have aduration (length in time) determined based on the durations of itssymbols, possibly in addition to cyclic prefix/es used. The symbols of atransmission timing structure may have the same duration, or may in somevariants have different duration. The number of symbols in atransmission timing structure may be predefined and/or configured orconfigurable, and/or be dependent on numerology. The timing of amini-slot may generally be configured or configurable, in particular bythe network and/or a network node. The timing may be configurable tostart and/or end at any symbol of the transmission timing structure, inparticular one or more slots.

A transmission quality parameter may in general correspond to the numberR of retransmissions and/or number T of total transmissions, and/orcoding (e.g., number of coding bits, e.g. for error detection codingand/or error correction coding like FEC coding) and/or code rate and/orBLER and/or BER requirements and/or transmission power level (e.g.,minimum level and/or target level and/or base power level PO and/ortransmission power control command, TPC, step size) and/or signalquality, e.g. SNR and/or SIR and/or SINR and/or power density and/orenergy density.

A buffer state report (or buffer status report, BSR) may compriseinformation representing the presence and/or size of data to betransmitted (e.g., available in one or more buffers, for exampleprovided by higher layers). The size may be indicated explicitly, and/orindexed to range/s of sizes, and/or may pertain to one or more differentchannel/s and/or acknowledgement processes and/or higher layers and/orchannel groups/s, e.g., one or more logical channel/s and/or transportchannel/s and/or groups thereof: The structure of a BSR may bepredefined and/or configurable of configured, e.g. to override and/oramend a predefined structure, for example with higher layer signaling,e.g. RRC signaling. There may be different forms of BSR with differentlevels of resolution and/or information, e.g. a more detailed long BSRand a less detailed short BSR. A short BSR may concatenate and/orcombine information of a long BSR, e.g. providing sums for dataavailable for one or more channels and/or or channels groups and/orbuffers, which might be represented individually in a long BSR; and/ormay index a less-detailed range scheme for data available or buffered. ABSR may be used in lieu of a scheduling request, e.g. by a network nodescheduling or allocating (uplink) resources for the transmitting radionode like a wireless device or UE or IAB node.

There is generally considered a program product comprising instructionsadapted for causing processing and/or control circuitry to carry outand/or control any method described herein, in particular when executedon the processing and/or control circuitry. Also, there is considered acarrier medium arrangement carrying and/or storing a program product asdescribed herein.

A carrier medium arrangement may comprise one or more carrier media.Generally, a carrier medium may be accessible and/or readable and/orreceivable by processing or control circuitry. Storing data and/or aprogram product and/or code may be seen as part of carrying data and/ora program product and/or code. A carrier medium generally may comprise aguiding/transporting medium and/or a storage medium. Aguiding/transporting medium may be adapted to carry and/or carry and/orstore signals, in particular electromagnetic signals and/or electricalsignals and/or magnetic signals and/or optical signals. A carriermedium, in particular a guiding/transporting medium, may be adapted toguide such signals to carry them. A carrier medium, in particular aguiding/transporting medium, may comprise the electromagnetic field,e.g. radio waves or microwaves, and/or optically transmissive material,e.g. glass fiber, and/or cable. A storage medium may comprise at leastone of a memory, which may be volatile or non-volatile, a buffer, acache, an optical disc, magnetic memory, flash memory, etc.

A system comprising one or more radio nodes as described herein, inparticular a network node and a user equipment, is described. The systemmay be a wireless communication system, and/or provide and/or representa radio access network.

Moreover, there may be generally considered a method of operating aninformation system, the method comprising providing information.Alternatively, or additionally, an information system adapted forproviding information may be considered. Providing information maycomprise providing information for, and/or to, a target system, whichmay comprise and/or be implemented as radio access network and/or aradio node, in particular a network node or user equipment or terminal.Providing information may comprise transferring and/or streaming and/orsending and/or passing on the information, and/or offering theinformation for such and/or for download, and/or triggering suchproviding, e.g. by triggering a different system or node to streamand/or transfer and/or send and/or pass on the information. Theinformation system may comprise, and/or be connected or connectable to,a target, for example via one or more intermediate systems, e.g. a corenetwork and/or internet and/or private or local network. Information maybe provided utilising and/or via such intermediate system/s. Providinginformation may be for radio transmission and/or for transmission via anair interface and/or utilising a RAN or radio node as described herein.Connecting the information system to a target, and/or providinginformation, may be based on a target indication, and/or adaptive to atarget indication. A target indication may indicate the target, and/orone or more parameters of transmission pertaining to the target and/orthe paths or connections over which the information is provided to thetarget. Such parameter/s may in particular pertain to the air interfaceand/or radio access network and/or radio node and/or network node.Example parameters may indicate for example type and/or nature of thetarget, and/or transmission capacity (e.g., data rate) and/or latencyand/or reliability and/or cost, respectively one or more estimatesthereof. The target indication may be provided by the target, ordetermined by the information system, e.g. based on information receivedfrom the target and/or historical information, and/or be provided by auser, for example a user operating the target or a device incommunication with the target, e.g. via the RAN and/or air interface.For example, a user may indicate on a user equipment communicating withthe information system that information is to be provided via a RAN,e.g. by selecting from a selection provided by the information system,for example on a user application or user interface, which may be a webinterface. An information system may comprise one or more informationnodes. An information node may generally comprise processing circuitryand/or communication circuitry. In particular, an information systemand/or an information node may be implemented as a computer and/or acomputer arrangement, e.g. a host computer or host computer arrangementand/or server or server arrangement. In some variants, an interactionserver (e.g., web server) of the information system may provide a userinterface, and based on user input may trigger transmitting and/orstreaming information provision to the user (and/or the target) fromanother server, which may be connected or connectable to the interactionserver and/or be part of the information system or be connected orconnectable thereto. The information may be any kind of data, inparticular data intended for a user of for use at a terminal, e.g. videodata and/or audio data and/or location data and/or interactive dataand/or game-related data and/or environmental data and/or technical dataand/or traffic data and/or vehicular data and/or circumstantial dataand/or operational data. The information provided by the informationsystem may be mapped to, and/or mappable to, and/or be intended formapping to, communication or data signaling and/or one or more datachannels as described herein (which may be signaling or channel/s of anair interface and/or used within a RAN and/or for radio transmission).It may be considered that the information is formatted based on thetarget indication and/or target, e.g. regarding data amount and/or datarate and/or data structure and/or timing, which in particular may bepertaining to a mapping to communication or data signaling and/or a datachannel. Mapping information to data signaling and/or data channel/s maybe considered to refer to using the signaling/channel/s to carry thedata, e.g. on higher layers of communication, with thesignaling/channel/s underlying the transmission. A target indicationgenerally may comprise different components, which may have differentsources, and/or which may indicate different characteristics of thetarget and/or communication path/s thereto. A format of information maybe specifically selected, e.g. from a set of different formats, forinformation to be transmitted on an air interface and/or by a RAN asdescribed herein. This may be particularly pertinent since an airinterface may be limited in terms of capacity and/or of predictability,and/or potentially be cost sensitive. The format may be selected to beadapted to the transmission indication, which may in particular indicatethat a RAN or radio node as described herein is in the path (which maybe the indicated and/or planned and/or expected path) of informationbetween the target and the information system. A (communication) path ofinformation may represent the interface/s (e.g., air and/or cableinterfaces) and/or the intermediate system/s (if any), between theinformation system and/or the node providing or transferring theinformation, and the target, over which the information is, or is to be,passed on. A path may be (at least partly) undetermined when a targetindication is provided, and/or the information is provided/transferredby the information system, e.g. if an internet is involved, which maycomprise multiple, dynamically chosen paths. Information and/or a formatused for information may be packet-based, and/or be mapped, and/or bemappable and/or be intended for mapping, to packets. Alternatively, oradditionally, there may be considered a method for operating a targetdevice comprising providing a target indicating to an informationsystem. More alternatively, or additionally, a target device may beconsidered, the target device being adapted for providing a targetindication to an information system. In another approach, there may beconsidered a target indication tool adapted for, and/or comprising anindication module for, providing a target indication to an informationsystem. The target device may generally be a target as described above.A target indication tool may comprise, and/or be implemented as,software and/or application or app, and/or web interface or userinterface, and/or may comprise one or more modules for implementingactions performed and/or controlled by the tool. The tool and/or targetdevice may be adapted for, and/or the method may comprise, receiving auser input, based on which a target indicating may be determined and/orprovided. Alternatively, or additionally, the tool and/or target devicemay be adapted for, and/or the method may comprise, receivinginformation and/or communication signaling carrying information, and/oroperating on, and/or presenting (e.g., on a screen and/or as audio or asother form of indication), information. The information may be based onreceived information and/or communication signaling carryinginformation. Presenting information may comprise processing receivedinformation, e.g. decoding and/or transforming, in particular betweendifferent formats, and/or for hardware used for presenting. Operating oninformation may be independent of or without presenting, and/or proceedor succeed presenting, and/or may be without user interaction or evenuser reception, for example for automatic processes, or target deviceswithout (e.g., regular) user interaction like MTC devices, of forautomotive or transport or industrial use. The information orcommunication signaling may be expected and/or received based on thetarget indication. Presenting and/or operating on information maygenerally comprise one or more processing steps, in particular decodingand/or executing and/or interpreting and/or transforming information.Operating on information may generally comprise relaying and/ortransmitting the information, e.g. on an air interface, which mayinclude mapping the information onto signaling (such mapping maygenerally pertain to one or more layers, e.g. one or more layers of anair interface, e.g. RLC (Radio Link Control) layer and/or MAC layerand/or physical layer/s). The information may be imprinted (or mapped)on communication signaling based on the target indication, which maymake it particularly suitable for use in a RAN (e.g., for a targetdevice like a network node or in particular a UE or terminal). The toolmay generally be adapted for use on a target device, like a UE orterminal. Generally, the tool may provide multiple functionalities, e.g.for providing and/or selecting the target indication, and/or presenting,e.g. video and/or audio, and/or operating on and/or storing receivedinformation. Providing a target indication may comprise transmitting ortransferring the indication as signaling, and/or carried on signaling,in a RAN, for example if the target device is a UE, or the tool for aUE. It should be noted that such provided information may be transferredto the information system via one or more additionally communicationinterfaces and/or paths and/or connections. The target indication may bea higher-layer indication and/or the information provided by theinformation system may be higher-layer information, e.g. applicationlayer or user-layer, in particular above radio layers like transportlayer and physical layer. The target indication may be mapped onphysical layer radio signaling, e.g. related to or on the user-plane,and/or the information may be mapped on physical layer radiocommunication signaling, e.g. related to or on the user-plane (inparticular, in reverse communication directions). The describedapproaches allow a target indication to be provided, facilitatinginformation to be provided in a specific format particularly suitableand/or adapted to efficiently use an air interface. A user input may forexample represent a selection from a plurality of possible transmissionmodes or formats, and/or paths, e.g. in terms of data rate and/orpackaging and/or size of information to be provided by the informationsystem.

In general, a numerology and/or subcarrier spacing may indicate thebandwidth (in frequency domain) of a subcarrier of a carrier, and/or thenumber of subcarriers in a carrier and/or the numbering of thesubcarriers in a carrier, and/or the symbol time length. Differentnumerologies may in particular be different in the bandwidth of asubcarrier. In some variants, all the subcarriers in a carrier have thesame bandwidth associated to them. The numerology and/or subcarrierspacing may be different between carriers in particular regarding thesubcarrier bandwidth. A symbol time length, and/or a time length of atiming structure pertaining to a carrier may be dependent on the carrierfrequency, and/or the subcarrier spacing and/or the numerology. Inparticular, different numerologies may have different symbol timelengths, even on the same carrier.

Signaling may generally comprise one or more (e.g., modulation) symbolsand/or signals and/or messages. A signal may comprise or represent oneor more bits. An indication may represent signaling, and/or beimplemented as a signal, or as a plurality of signals. One or moresignals may be included in and/or represented by a message. Signaling,in particular control signaling, may comprise a plurality of signalsand/or messages, which may be transmitted on different carriers and/orbe associated to different signaling processes, e.g. representing and/orpertaining to one or more such processes and/or correspondinginformation. An indication may comprise signaling, and/or a plurality ofsignals and/or messages and/or may be comprised therein, which may betransmitted on different carriers and/or be associated to differentacknowledgement signaling processes, e.g. representing and/or pertainingto one or more such processes. Signaling associated to a channel may betransmitted such that represents signaling and/or information for thatchannel, and/or that the signaling is interpreted by the transmitterand/or receiver to belong to that channel. Such signaling may generallycomply with transmission parameters and/or format/s for the channel.

An antenna arrangement may comprise one or more antenna elements(radiating elements), which may be combined in antenna arrays. Anantenna array or subarray may comprise one antenna element, or aplurality of antenna elements, which may be arranged e.g. twodimensionally (for example, a panel) or three dimensionally. It may beconsidered that each antenna array or subarray or element is separatelycontrollable, respectively that different antenna arrays arecontrollable separately from each other. A single antennaelement/radiator may be considered the smallest example of a subarray.Examples of antenna arrays comprise one or more multi-antenna panels orone or more individually controllable antenna elements. An antennaarrangement may comprise a plurality of antenna arrays. It may beconsidered that an antenna arrangement is associated to a (specificand/or single) radio node, e.g. a configuring or informing or schedulingradio node, e.g. to be controlled or controllable by the radio node. Anantenna arrangement associated to a UE or terminal may be smaller (e.g.,in size and/or number of antenna elements or arrays) than the antennaarrangement associated to a network node. Antenna elements of an antennaarrangement may be configurable for different arrays, e.g. to change thebeamforming characteristics. In particular, antenna arrays may be formedby combining one or more independently or separately controllableantenna elements or subarrays. The beams may be provided by analogbeamforming, or in some variants by digital beamforming, or by hybridbeamforming combing analog and digital beamforming. The informing radionodes may be configured with the manner of beam transmission, e.g. bytransmitting a corresponding indicator or indication, for example asbeam identify indication. However, there may be considered cases inwhich the informing radio node/s are not configured with suchinformation, and/or operate transparently, not knowing the way ofbeamforming used. An antenna arrangement may be considered separatelycontrollable in regard to the phase and/or amplitude/power and/or gainof a signal feed to it for transmission, and/or separately controllableantenna arrangements may comprise an independent or separate transmitand/or receive unit and/or ADC (Analog-Digital-Converter, alternativelyan ADC chain) or DCA (Digital-to-Analog Converter, alternatively a DCAchain) to convert digital control information into an analog antennafeed for the whole antenna arrangement (the ADC/DCA may be consideredpart of, and/or connected or connectable to, antenna circuitry) or viceversa. A scenario in which an ADC or DCA is controlled directly forbeamforming may be considered an analog beamforming scenario; suchcontrolling may be performed after encoding/decoding and/or aftermodulation symbols have been mapped to resource elements. This may be onthe level of antenna arrangements using the same ADC/DCA, e.g. oneantenna element or a group of antenna elements associated to the sameADC/DCA. Digital beamforming may correspond to a scenario in whichprocessing for beamforming is provided before feeding signaling to theADC/DCA, e.g. by using one or more precoder/s and/or by precodinginformation, for example before and/or when mapping modulation symbolsto resource elements. Such a precoder for beamforming may provideweights, e.g. for amplitude and/or phase, and/or may be based on a(precoder) codebook, e.g. selected from a codebook. A precoder maypertain to one beam or more beams, e.g. defining the beam or beams. Thecodebook may be configured or configurable, and/or be predefined. DFTbeamforming may be considered a form of digital beamforming, wherein aDFT procedure is used to form one or more beams. Hybrid forms ofbeamforming may be considered.

A beam may be defined by a spatial and/or angular and/or spatial angulardistribution of radiation and/or a spatial angle (also referred to assolid angle) or spatial (solid) angle distribution into which radiationis transmitted (for transmission beamforming) or from which it isreceived (for reception beamforming). Reception beamforming may compriseonly accepting signals coming in from a reception beam (e.g., usinganalog beamforming to not receive outside reception beam/s), and/orsorting out signals that do not come in in a reception beam, e.g. indigital postprocessing, e.g. digital beamforming. A beam may have asolid angle equal to or smaller than 4*pi sr (4*pi correspond to a beamcovering all directions), in particular smaller than 2*pi, or pi, orpi/2, or pi/4 or pi/8 or pi/16. In particular for high frequencies,smaller beams may be used. Different beams may have different directionsand/or sizes (e.g., solid angle and/or reach). A beam may have a maindirection, which may be defined by a main lobe (e.g., center of the mainlobe, e.g. pertaining to signal strength and/or solid angle, which maybe averaged and/or weighted to determine the direction), and may haveone or more sidelobes. A lobe may generally be defined to have acontinuous or contiguous distribution of energy and/or power transmittedand/or received, e.g. bounded by one or more contiguous or contiguousregions of zero energy (or practically zero energy). A main lobe maycomprise the lobe with the largest signal strength and/or energy and/orpower content. However, sidelobes usually appear due to limitations ofbeamforming, some of which may carry signals with significant strength,and may cause multi-path effects. A sidelobe may generally have adifferent direction than a main lobe and/or other side lobes, however,due to reflections a sidelobe still may contribute to transmitted and/orreceived energy or power. A beam may be swept and/or switched over time,e.g., such that its (main) direction is changed, but its shape(angular/solid angle distribution) around the main direction is notchanged, e.g. from the transmitter's views for a transmission beam, orthe receiver's view for a reception beam, respectively. Sweeping maycorrespond to continuous or near continuous change of main direction(e.g., such that after each change, the main lobe from before the changecovers at least partly the main lobe after the change, e.g. at least to50 or 75 or 90 percent). Switching may correspond to switching directionnon-continuously, e.g. such that after each change, the main lobe frombefore the change does not cover the main lobe after the change, e.g. atmost to 50 or 25 or 10 percent.

Signal strength may be a representation of signal power and/or signalenergy, e.g. as seen from a transmitting node or a receiving node. Abeam with larger strength at transmission (e.g., according to thebeamforming used) than another beam does may not necessarily have largerstrength at the receiver, and vice versa, for example due tointerference and/or obstruction and/or dispersion and/or absorptionand/or reflection and/or attrition or other effects influencing a beamor the signaling it carries. Signal quality may in general be arepresentation of how well a signal may be received over noise and/orinterference. A beam with better signal quality than another beam doesnot necessarily have a larger beam strength than the other beam. Signalquality may be represented for example by SIR, SNR, SINR, BER, BLER,Energy per resource element over noise/interference or anothercorresponding quality measure. Signal quality and/or signal strength maypertain to, and/or may be measured with respect to, a beam, and/orspecific signaling carried by the beam, e.g. reference signaling and/ora specific channel, e.g. a data channel or control channel. Signalstrength may be represented by received signal strength, and/or relativesignal strength, e.g. in comparison to a reference signal (strength).

Uplink or sidelink signaling may be OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency DivisionMultiple Access) or SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division MultipleAccess) signaling. Downlink signaling may in particular be OFDMAsignaling. However, signaling is not limited thereto (Filter-Bank basedsignaling and/or Single-Carrier based signaling, e.g. SC-FDE signaling,may be considered alternatives).

A radio node may generally be considered a device or node adapted forwireless and/or radio (and/or millimeter wave) frequency communication,and/or for communication utilising an air interface, e.g. according to acommunication standard.

A radio node may be a network node, or a user equipment or terminal. Anetwork node may be any radio node of a wireless communication network,e.g. a base station and/or gNodeB (gNB) and/or eNodeB (eNB) and/or relaynode and/or micro/nano/pico/femto node and/or transmission point (TP)and/or access point (AP) and/or other node, in particular for a RAN orother wireless communication network as described herein.

The terms user equipment (UE) and terminal may be considered to beinterchangeable in the context of this disclosure. A wireless device,user equipment or terminal may represent an end device for communicationutilising the wireless communication network, and/or be implemented as auser equipment according to a standard. Examples of user equipments maycomprise a phone like a smartphone, a personal communication device, amobile phone or terminal, a computer, in particular laptop, a sensor ormachine with radio capability (and/or adapted for the air interface), inparticular for MTC (Machine-Type-Communication, sometimes also referredto M2M, Machine-To-Machine), or a vehicle adapted for wirelesscommunication. A user equipment or terminal may be mobile or stationary.A wireless device generally may comprise, and/or be implemented as,processing circuitry and/or radio circuitry, which may comprise one ormore chips or sets of chips. The circuitry and/or circuitries may bepackaged, e.g. in a chip housing, and/or may have one or more physicalinterfaces to interact with other circuitry and/or for power supply.Such a wireless device may be intended for use in a user equipment orterminal.

A radio node may generally comprise processing circuitry and/or radiocircuitry. A radio node, in particular a network node, may in some casescomprise cable circuitry and/or communication circuitry, with which itmay be connected or connectable to another radio node and/or a corenetwork.

Circuitry may comprise integrated circuitry. Processing circuitry maycomprise one or more processors and/or controllers (e.g.,microcontrollers), and/or ASICs (Application Specific IntegratedCircuitry) and/or FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array), or similar. Itmay be considered that processing circuitry comprises, and/or is(operatively) connected or connectable to one or more memories or memoryarrangements. A memory arrangement may comprise one or more memories. Amemory may be adapted to store digital information. Examples formemories comprise volatile and non-volatile memory, and/or Random AccessMemory (RAM), and/or Read-Only-Memory (ROM), and/or magnetic and/oroptical memory, and/or flash memory, and/or hard disk memory, and/orEPROM or EEPROM (Erasable Programmable ROM or Electrically ErasableProgrammable ROM).

Radio circuitry may comprise one or more transmitters and/or receiversand/or transceivers (a transceiver may operate or be operable astransmitter and receiver, and/or may comprise joint or separatedcircuitry for receiving and transmitting, e.g. in one package orhousing), and/or may comprise one or more amplifiers and/or oscillatorsand/or filters, and/or may comprise, and/or be connected or connectableto antenna circuitry and/or one or more antennas and/or antenna arrays.An antenna array may comprise one or more antennas, which may bearranged in a dimensional array, e.g. 2D or 3D array, and/or antennapanels. A remote radio head (RRH) may be considered as an example of anantenna array. However, in some variants, an RRH may be also beimplemented as a network node, depending on the kind of circuitry and/orfunctionality implemented therein.

Communication circuitry may comprise radio circuitry and/or cablecircuitry. Communication circuitry generally may comprise one or moreinterfaces, which may be air interface/s and/or cable interface/s and/oroptical interface/s, e.g. laser-based. Interface/s may be in particularpacket-based. Cable circuitry and/or a cable interfaces may comprise,and/or be connected or connectable to, one or more cables (e.g., opticalfiber-based and/or wire-based), which may be directly or indirectly(e.g., via one or more intermediate systems and/or interfaces) beconnected or connectable to a target, e.g. controlled by communicationcircuitry and/or processing circuitry.

Any one or all of the modules disclosed herein may be implemented insoftware and/or firmware and/or hardware. Different modules may beassociated to different components of a radio node, e.g. differentcircuitries or different parts of a circuitry. It may be considered thata module is distributed over different components and/or circuitries. Aprogram product as described herein may comprise the modules related toa device on which the program product is intended (e.g., a userequipment or network node) to be executed (the execution may beperformed on, and/or controlled by the associated circuitry).

A wireless communication network may be or comprise a radio accessnetwork and/or a backhaul network (e.g. a relay or backhaul network oran IAB network), and/or a Radio Access Network (RAN) in particularaccording to a communication standard. A communication standard may inparticular a standard according to 3GPP and/or 5G, e.g. according to NRor LTE, in particular LTE Evolution.

A wireless communication network may be and/or comprise a Radio AccessNetwork (RAN), which may be and/or comprise any kind of cellular and/orwireless radio network, which may be connected or connectable to a corenetwork. The approaches described herein are particularly suitable for a5G network, e.g. LTE Evolution and/or NR (New Radio), respectivelysuccessors thereof. A RAN may comprise one or more network nodes, and/orone or more terminals, and/or one or more radio nodes. A network nodemay in particular be a radio node adapted for radio and/or wirelessand/or cellular communication with one or more terminals. A terminal maybe any device adapted for radio and/or wireless and/or cellularcommunication with or within a RAN, e.g. a user equipment (UE) or mobilephone or smartphone or computing device or vehicular communicationdevice or device for machine-type-communication (MTC), etc. A terminalmay be mobile, or in some cases stationary. A RAN or a wirelesscommunication network may comprise at least one network node and a UE,or at least two radio nodes. There may be generally considered awireless communication network or system, e.g. a RAN or RAN system,comprising at least one radio node, and/or at least one network node andat least one terminal.

Transmitting in downlink may pertain to transmission from the network ornetwork node to the terminal. Transmitting in uplink may pertain totransmission from the terminal to the network or network node.Transmitting in sidelink may pertain to (direct) transmission from oneterminal to another. Uplink, downlink and sidelink (e.g., sidelinktransmission and reception) may be considered communication directions.In some variants, uplink and downlink may also be used to describedwireless communication between network nodes, e.g. for wireless backhauland/or relay communication and/or (wireless) network communication forexample between base stations or similar network nodes, in particularcommunication terminating at such. It may be considered that backhauland/or relay communication and/or network communication is implementedas a form of sidelink or uplink communication or similar thereto.

Control information or a control information message or correspondingsignaling (control signaling) may be transmitted on a control channel,e.g. a physical control channel, which may be a downlink channel or (ora sidelink channel in some cases, e.g. one UE scheduling another UE).For example, control information/allocation information may be signaledby a network node on PDCCH (Physical Downlink Control Channel) and/or aPDSCH (Physical Downlink Shared Channel) and/or a HARQ-specific channel.Acknowledgement signaling, e.g. as a form of control information orsignaling like uplink control information/signaling, may be transmittedby a terminal on a PUCCH (Physical Uplink Control Channel) and/or PUSCH(Physical Uplink Shared Channel) and/or a HARQ-specific channel.Multiple channels may apply for multi-component/multi-carrier indicationor signaling.

Transmitting acknowledgement signaling may in general be based on and/orin response to subject transmission, and/or to control signalingscheduling subject transmission. Such control signaling and/or subjectsignaling may be transmitted by a signaling radio node (which may be anetwork node, and/or a node associated to it, e.g. in a dualconnectivity scenario. Subject transmission and/or subject signaling maybe transmission or signaling to which ACK/NACK or acknowledgementinformation pertains, e.g. indicating correct or incorrect receptionand/or decoding of the subject transmission or signaling. Subjectsignaling or transmission may in particular comprise and/or berepresented by data signaling, e.g. on a PDSCH or PSSCH, or some formsof control signaling, e.g. on a PDCCH or PSSCH, for example for specificformats.

A signaling characteristic may be based on a type or format of ascheduling grant and/or scheduling assignment, and/or type ofallocation, and/or timing of acknowledgement signaling and/or thescheduling grant and/or scheduling assignment, and/or resourcesassociated to acknowledgement signaling and/or the scheduling grantand/or scheduling assignment. For example, if a specific format for ascheduling grant (scheduling or allocating the allocated resources) orscheduling assignment (scheduling the subject transmission foracknowledgement signaling) is used or detected, the first or secondcommunication resource may be used. Type of allocation may pertain todynamic allocation (e.g., using DCI/PDCCH) or semi-static allocation(e.g., for a configured grant). Timing of acknowledgement signaling maypertain to a slot and/or symbol/s the signaling is to be transmitted.Resources used for acknowledgement signaling may pertain to theallocated resources. Timing and/or resources associated to a schedulinggrant or assignment may represent a search space or CORESET (a set ofresources configured for reception of PDCCH transmissions) in which thegrant or assignment is received. Thus, which transmission resource to beused may be based on implicit conditions, requiring low signalingoverhead.

Scheduling may comprise indicating, e.g. with control signaling like DCIor SCI signaling and/or signaling on a control channel like PDCCH orPSCCH, one or more scheduling opportunities of a configuration intendedto carry data signaling or subject signaling. The configuration may berepresented or representable by, and/or correspond to, a table. Ascheduling assignment may for example point to an opportunity of thereception allocation configuration, e.g. indexing a table of schedulingopportunities. In some cases, a reception allocation configuration maycomprise 15 or 16 scheduling opportunities. The configuration may inparticular represent allocation in time. It may be considered that thereception allocation configuration pertains to data signaling, inparticular on a physical data channel like PDSCH or PSSCH. In general,the reception allocation configuration may pertain to downlinksignaling, or in some scenarios to sidelink signaling. Control signalingscheduling subject transmission like data signaling may point and/orindex and/or refer to and/or indicate a scheduling opportunity of thereception allocation configuration. It may be considered that thereception allocation configuration is configured or configurable withhigher-layer signaling, e.g. RRC or MAC layer signaling. The receptionallocation configuration may be applied and/or applicable and/or validfor a plurality of transmission timing intervals, e.g. such that foreach interval, one or more opportunities may be indicated or allocatedfor data signaling. These approaches allow efficient and flexiblescheduling, which may be semi-static, but may updated or reconfigured onuseful timescales in response to changes of operation conditions.

Control information, e.g., in a control information message, in thiscontext may in particular be implemented as and/or represented by ascheduling assignment, which may indicate subject transmission forfeedback (transmission of acknowledgement signaling), and/or reportingtiming and/or frequency resources and/or code resources.

Reporting timing may indicate a timing for scheduled acknowledgementsignaling, e.g. slot and/or symbol and/or resource set. Controlinformation may be carried by control signaling.

Subject transmissions may comprise one or more individual transmissions.Scheduling assignments may comprise one or more scheduling assignments.It should generally be noted that in a distributed system, subjecttransmissions, configuration and/or scheduling may be provided bydifferent nodes or devices or transmission points. Different subjecttransmissions may be on the same carrier or different carriers (e.g., ina carrier aggregation), and/or same or different bandwidth parts, and/oron the same or different layers or beams, e.g. in a MIMO scenario,and/or to same or different ports. Generally, subject transmissions maypertain to different HARQ or ARQ processes (or different sub-processes,e.g. in MIMO with different beams/layers associated to the same processidentifier, but different sub-process-identifiers like swap bits). Ascheduling assignment and/or a HARQ codebook may indicate a target HARQstructure. A target HARQ structure may for example indicate an intendedHARQ response to a subject transmission, e.g. the number of bits and/orwhether to provide code block group level response or not. However, itshould be noted that the actual structure used may differ from thetarget structure, e.g. due to the total size of target structures for asubpattern being larger than the predetermined size.

Transmitting acknowledgement signaling, also referred to as transmittingacknowledgement information or feedback information or simply as ARQ orHARQ feedback or feedback or reporting feedback, may comprise, and/or bebased on determining correct or incorrect reception of subjecttransmission/s, e.g. based on error coding and/or based on schedulingassignment/s scheduling the subject transmissions. Transmittingacknowledgement information may be based on, and/or comprise, astructure for acknowledgement information to transmit, e.g. thestructure of one or more subpatterns, e.g. based on which subjecttransmission is scheduled for an associated subdivision. Transmittingacknowledgement information may comprise transmitting correspondingsignaling, e.g. at one instance and/or in one message and/or onechannel, in particular a physical channel, which may be a controlchannel. In some cases, the channel may be a shared channel or datachannel, e.g. utilising rate-matching of the acknowledgment information.The acknowledgement information may generally pertain to a plurality ofsubject transmissions, which may be on different channels and/orcarriers, and/or may comprise data signaling and/or control signaling.The acknowledgment information may be based on a codebook, which may bebased on one or more size indications and/or assignment indications(representing HARQ structures), which may be received with a pluralityof control signalings and/or control messages, e.g. in the same ordifferent transmission timing structures, and/or in the same ordifferent (target) sets of resources. Transmitting acknowledgementinformation may comprise determining the codebook, e.g. based on controlinformation in one or more control information messages and/or aconfiguration. A codebook may pertain to transmitting acknowledgementinformation at a single and/or specific instant, e.g. a single PUCCH orPUSCH transmission, and/or in one message or with jointly encoded and/ormodulated acknowledgement information. Generally, acknowledgmentinformation may be transmitted together with other control information,e.g. a scheduling request and/or measurement information.

Acknowledgement signaling may in some cases comprise, next toacknowledgement information, other information, e.g. controlinformation, in particular, uplink or sidelink control information, likea scheduling request and/or measurement information, or similar, and/orerror detection and/or correction information, respectively associatedbits. The payload size of acknowledgement signaling may represent thenumber of bits of acknowledgement information, and/or in some cases thetotal number of bits carried by the acknowledgement signaling, and/orthe number of resource elements needed. Acknowledgement signaling and/orinformation may pertain to ARQ and/or HARQ processes; an ARQ process mayprovide ACK/NACK (and perhaps additional feedback) feedback, anddecoding may be performed on each (re-)transmission separately, withoutsoft-buffering/soft-combining intermediate data, whereas HARQ maycomprise soft-buffering/soft-combining of intermediate data of decodingfor one or more (re-)transmissions.

Subject transmission may be data signaling or control signaling. Thetransmission may be on a shared or dedicated channel. Data signaling maybe on a data channel, for example on a PDSCH or PSSCH, or on a dedicateddata channel, e.g. for low latency and/or high reliability, e.g. a URLLCchannel. Control signaling may be on a control channel, for example on acommon control channel or a PDCCH or PSCCH, and/or comprise one or moreDCI messages or SCI messages. In some cases, the subject transmissionmay comprise, or represent, reference signaling. For example, it maycomprise DM-RS and/or pilot signaling and/or discovery signaling and/orsounding signaling and/or phase tracking signaling and/or cell-specificreference signaling and/or user-specific signaling, in particularCSI-RS. A subject transmission may pertain to one scheduling assignmentand/or one acknowledgement signaling process (e.g., according toidentifier or subidentifier), and/or one subdivision. In some cases, asubject transmission may cross the borders of subdivisions in time, e.g.due to being scheduled to start in one subdivision and extending intoanother, or even crossing over more than one subdivision. In this case,it may be considered that the subject transmission is associated to thesubdivision it ends in.

It may be considered that transmitting acknowledgement information, inparticular of acknowledgement information, is based on determiningwhether the subject transmission/s has or have been received correctly,e.g. based on error coding and/or reception quality. Reception qualitymay for example be based on a determined signal quality. Acknowledgementinformation may generally be transmitted to a signaling radio nodeand/or node arrangement and/or to a network and/or network node.

Acknowledgement information, or bit/s of a subpattern structure of suchinformation (e.g., an acknowledgement information structure, mayrepresent and/or comprise one or more bits, in particular a pattern ofbits. Multiple bits pertaining to a data structure or substructure ormessage like a control message may be considered a subpattern. Thestructure or arrangement of acknowledgement information may indicate theorder, and/or meaning, and/or mapping, and/or pattern of bits (orsubpatterns of bits) of the information. The structure or mapping may inparticular indicate one or more data block structures, e.g. code blocksand/or code block groups and/or transport blocks and/or messages, e.g.command messages, the acknowledgement information pertains to, and/orwhich bits or subpattern of bits are associated to which data blockstructure. In some cases, the mapping may pertain to one or moreacknowledgement signaling processes, e.g. processes with differentidentifiers, and/or one or more different data streams. Theconfiguration or structure or codebook may indicate to which process/esand/or data stream/s the information pertains. Generally, theacknowledgement information may comprise one or more subpatterns, eachof which may pertain to a data block structure, e.g. a code block orcode block group or transport block. A subpattern may be arranged toindicate acknowledgement or non-acknowledgement, or anotherretransmission state like non-scheduling or non-reception, of theassociated data block structure. It may be considered that a subpatterncomprises one bit, or in some cases more than one bit. It should benoted that acknowledgement information may be subjected to significantprocessing before being transmitted with acknowledgement signaling.Different configurations may indicate different sizes and/or mappingand/or structures and/or pattern.

An acknowledgment signaling process (providing acknowledgmentinformation) may be a HARQ process, and/or be identified by a processidentifier, e.g. a HARQ process identifier or subidentifier.Acknowledgement signaling and/or associated acknowledgement informationmay be referred to as feedback or acknowledgement feedback. It should benoted that data blocks or structures to which subpatterns may pertainmay be intended to carry data (e.g., information and/or systemic and/orcoding bits). However, depending on transmission conditions, such datamay be received or not received (or not received correctly), which maybe indicated correspondingly in the feedback. In some cases, asubpattern of acknowledgement signaling may comprise padding bits, e.g.if the acknowledgement information for a data block requires fewer bitsthan indicated as size of the subpattern. Such may for example happen ifthe size is indicated by a unit size larger than required for thefeedback.

Acknowledgment information may generally indicate at least ACK or NACK,e.g. pertaining to an acknowledgment signaling process, or an element ofa data block structure like a data block, subblock group or subblock, ora message, in particular a control message. Generally, to anacknowledgment signaling process there may be associated one specificsubpattern and/or a data block structure, for which acknowledgmentinformation may be provided. Acknowledgement information may comprise aplurality of pieces of information, represented in a plurality of ARQand/or HARQ structures.

An acknowledgment signaling process may determine correct or incorrectreception, and/or corresponding acknowledgement information, of a datablock like a transport block, and/or substructures thereof, based oncoding bits associated to the data block, and/or based on coding bitsassociated to one or more data block and/or subblocks and/or subblockgroup/s. Acknowledgement information (determined by an acknowledgementsignaling process) may pertain to the data block as a whole, and/or toone or more subblocks or subblock groups. A code block may be consideredan example of a subblock, whereas a code block group may be consideredan example of a subblock group. Accordingly, the associated subpatternmay comprise one or more bits indicating reception status or feedback ofthe data block, and/or one or more bits indicating reception status orfeedback of one or more subblocks or subblock groups. Each subpattern orbit of the subpattern may be associated and/or mapped to a specific datablock or subblock or subblock group. In some variants, correct receptionfor a data block may be indicated if all subblocks or subblock groupsare correctly identified. In such a case, the subpattern may representacknowledgement information for the data block as a whole, reducingoverhead in comparison to provide acknowledgement information for thesubblocks or subblock groups. The smallest structure (e.g.subblock/subblock group/data block) the subpattern providesacknowledgement information for and/or is associated to may beconsidered its (highest) resolution. In some variants, a subpattern mayprovide acknowledgment information regarding several elements of a datablock structure and/or at different resolution, e.g. to allow morespecific error detection. For example, even if a subpattern indicatesacknowledgment signaling pertaining to a data block as a whole, in somevariants higher resolution (e.g., subblock or subblock group resolution)may be provided by the subpattern. A subpattern may generally compriseone or more bits indicating ACK/NACK for a data block, and/or one ormore bits for indicating ACK/NACK for a subblock or subblock group, orfor more than one subblock or subblock group.

A subblock and/or subblock group may comprise information bits(representing the data to be transmitted, e.g. user data and/ordownlink/sidelink data or uplink data). It may be considered that a datablock and/or subblock and/or subblock group also comprises error one ormore error detection bits, which may pertain to, and/or be determinedbased on, the information bits (for a subblock group, the errordetection bit/s may be determined based on the information bits and/orerror detection bits and/or error correction bits of the subblock/s ofthe subblock group). A data block or substructure like subblock orsubblock group may comprise error correction bits, which may inparticular be determined based on the information bits and errordetection bits of the block or substructure, e.g. utilising an errorcorrection coding scheme, in particular for forward error correction(FEC), e.g. LDPC or polar coding and/or turbo coding. Generally, theerror correction coding of a data block structure (and/or associatedbits) may cover and/or pertain to information bits and error detectionbits of the structure. A subblock group may represent a combination ofone or more code blocks, respectively the corresponding bits. A datablock may represent a code block or code block group, or a combinationof more than one code block groups. A transport block may be split up incode blocks and/or code block groups, for example based on the bit sizeof the information bits of a higher layer data structure provided forerror coding and/or size requirements or preferences for error coding,in particular error correction coding. Such a higher layer datastructure is sometimes also referred to as transport block, which inthis context represents information bits without the error coding bitsdescribed herein, although higher layer error handling information maybe included, e.g. for an internet protocol like TCP. However, such errorhandling information represents information bits in the context of thisdisclosure, as the acknowledgement signaling procedures described treatit accordingly.

In some variants, a subblock like a code block may comprise errorcorrection bits, which may be determined based on the information bit/sand/or error detection bit/s of the subblock. An error correction codingscheme may be used for determining the error correction bits, e.g. basedon LDPC or polar coding or Reed-Mueller coding. In some cases, asubblock or code block may be considered to be defined as a block orpattern of bits comprising information bits, error detection bit/sdetermined based on the information bits, and error correction bit/sdetermined based on the information bits and/or error detection bit/s.It may be considered that in a subblock, e.g. code block, theinformation bits (and possibly the error correction bit/s) are protectedand/or covered by the error correction scheme or corresponding errorcorrection bit/s. A code block group may comprise one or more codeblocks. In some variants, no additional error detection bits and/orerror correction bits are applied, however, it may be considered toapply either or both. A transport block may comprise one or more codeblock groups. It may be considered that no additional error detectionbits and/or error correction bits are applied to a transport block,however, it may be considered to apply either or both. In some specificvariants, the code block group/s comprise no additional layers of errordetection or correction coding, and the transport block may compriseonly additional error detection coding bits, but no additional errorcorrection coding. This may particularly be true if the transport blocksize is larger than the code block size and/or the maximum size forerror correction coding. A subpattern of acknowledgement signaling (inparticular indicating ACK or NACK) may pertain to a code block, e.g.indicating whether the code block has been correctly received. It may beconsidered that a subpattern pertains to a subgroup like a code blockgroup or a data block like a transport block. In such cases, it mayindicate ACK, if all subblocks or code blocks of the group ordata/transport block are received correctly (e.g. based on a logical ANDoperation), and NACK or another state of non-correct reception if atleast one subblock or code block has not been correctly received. Itshould be noted that a code block may be considered to be correctlyreceived not only if it actually has been correctly received, but alsoif it can be correctly reconstructed based on soft-combining and/or theerror correction coding.

A subpattern/HARQ structure may pertain to one acknowledgement signalingprocess and/or one carrier like a component carrier and/or data blockstructure or data block. It may in particular be considered that one(e.g. specific and/or single) subpattern pertains, e.g. is mapped by thecodebook, to one (e.g., specific and/or single) acknowledgementsignaling process, e.g. a specific and/or single HARQ process. It may beconsidered that in the bit pattern, subpatterns are mapped toacknowledgement signaling processes and/or data blocks or data blockstructures on a one-to-one basis. In some variants, there may bemultiple subpatterns (and/or associated acknowledgment signalingprocesses) associated to the same component carrier, e.g. if multipledata streams transmitted on the carrier are subject to acknowledgementsignaling processes. A subpattern may comprise one or more bits, thenumber of which may be considered to represent its size or bit size.Different bit n-tupels (n being 1 or larger) of a subpattern may beassociated to different elements of a data block structure (e.g., datablock or subblock or subblock group), and/or represent differentresolutions. There may be considered variants in which only oneresolution is represented by a bit pattern, e.g. a data block. A bitn-tupel may represent acknowledgement information (also referred to afeedback), in particular ACK or NACK, and optionally, (if n>1), mayrepresent DTX/DRX or other reception states. ACK/NACK may be representedby one bit, or by more than one bit, e.g. to improve disambiguity of bitsequences representing ACK or NACK, and/or to improve transmissionreliability.

The acknowledgement information or feedback information may pertain to aplurality of different transmissions, which may be associated to and/orrepresented by data block structures, respectively the associated datablocks or data signaling. The data block structures, and/or thecorresponding blocks and/or signaling, may be scheduled for simultaneoustransmission, e.g. for the same transmission timing structure, inparticular within the same slot or subframe, and/or on the samesymbol/s. However, alternatives with scheduling for non-simultaneoustransmission may be considered. For example, the acknowledgmentinformation may pertain to data blocks scheduled for differenttransmission timing structures, e.g. different slots (or mini-slots, orslots and mini-slots) or similar, which may correspondingly be received(or not or wrongly received). Scheduling signaling may generallycomprise indicating resources, e.g. time and/or frequency resources, forexample for receiving or transmitting the scheduled signaling.

Signaling may generally be considered to represent an electromagneticwave structure (e.g., over a time interval and frequency interval),which is intended to convey information to at least one specific orgeneric (e.g., anyone who might pick up the signaling) target. A processof signaling may comprise transmitting the signaling. Transmittingsignaling, in particular control signaling or communication signaling,e.g. comprising or representing acknowledgement signaling and/orresource requesting information, may comprise encoding and/ormodulating. Encoding and/or modulating may comprise error detectioncoding and/or forward error correction encoding and/or scrambling.Receiving control signaling may comprise corresponding decoding and/ordemodulation. Error detection coding may comprise, and/or be based on,parity or checksum approaches, e.g. CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check).Forward error correction coding may comprise and/or be based on forexample turbo coding and/or Reed-Muller coding, and/or polar codingand/or LDPC coding (Low Density Parity Check). The type of coding usedmay be based on the channel (e.g., physical channel) the coded signal isassociated to. A code rate may represent the ratio of the number ofinformation bits before encoding to the number of encoded bits afterencoding, considering that encoding adds coding bits for error detectioncoding and forward error correction. Coded bits may refer to informationbits (also called systematic bits) plus coding bits.

Communication signaling may comprise, and/or represent, and/or beimplemented as, data signaling, and/or user plane signaling.Communication signaling may be associated to a data channel, e.g. aphysical downlink channel or physical uplink channel or physicalsidelink channel, in particular a PDSCH (Physical Downlink SharedChannel) or PSSCH (Physical Sidelink Shared Channel). Generally, a datachannel may be a shared channel or a dedicated channel. Data signalingmay be signaling associated to and/or on a data channel.

An indication generally may explicitly and/or implicitly indicate theinformation it represents and/or indicates. Implicit indication may forexample be based on position and/or resource used for transmission.Explicit indication may for example be based on a parametrisation withone or more parameters, and/or one or more index or indices, and/or oneor more bit patterns representing the information. It may in particularbe considered that control signaling as described herein, based on theutilised resource sequence, implicitly indicates the control signalingtype.

A resource element may generally describe the smallest individuallyusable and/or encodable and/or decodable and/or modulatable and/ordemodulatable time-frequency resource, and/or may describe atime-frequency resource covering a symbol time length in time and asubcarrier in frequency. A signal may be allocatable and/or allocated toa resource element. A subcarrier may be a subband of a carrier, e.g. asdefined by a standard. A carrier may define a frequency and/or frequencyband for transmission and/or reception. In some variants, a signal(jointly encoded/modulated) may cover more than one resource elements. Aresource element may generally be as defined by a correspondingstandard, e.g. NR or LTE. As symbol time length and/or subcarrierspacing (and/or numerology) may be different between different symbolsand/or subcarriers, different resource elements may have differentextension (length/width) in time and/or frequency domain, in particularresource elements pertaining to different carriers.

A resource generally may represent a time-frequency and/or coderesource, on which signaling, e.g. according to a specific format, maybe communicated, for example transmitted and/or received, and/or beintended for transmission and/or reception.

A border symbol may generally represent a starting symbol or an endingsymbol for transmitting and/or receiving. A starting symbol may inparticular be a starting symbol of uplink or sidelink signaling, forexample control signaling or data signaling. Such signaling may be on adata channel or control channel, e.g. a physical channel, in particulara physical uplink shared channel (like PUSCH) or a sidelink data orshared channel, or a physical uplink control channel (like PUCCH) or asidelink control channel. If the starting symbol is associated tocontrol signaling (e.g., on a control channel), the control signalingmay be in response to received signaling (in sidelink or downlink), e.g.representing acknowledgement signaling associated thereto, which may beHARQ or ARQ signaling. An ending symbol may represent an ending symbol(in time) of downlink or sidelink transmission or signaling, which maybe intended or scheduled for the radio node or user equipment. Suchdownlink signaling may in particular be data signaling, e.g. on aphysical downlink channel like a shared channel, e.g. a PDSCH (PhysicalDownlink Shared Channel). A starting symbol may be determined based on,and/or in relation to, such an ending symbol.

Configuring a radio node, in particular a terminal or user equipment,may refer to the radio node being adapted or caused or set and/orinstructed to operate according to the configuration. Configuring may bedone by another device, e.g., a network node (for example, a radio nodeof the network like a base station or eNodeB) or network, in which caseit may comprise transmitting configuration data to the radio node to beconfigured. Such configuration data may represent the configuration tobe configured and/or comprise one or more instruction pertaining to aconfiguration, e.g. a configuration for transmitting and/or receiving onallocated resources, in particular frequency resources. A radio node mayconfigure itself, e.g., based on configuration data received from anetwork or network node. A network node may utilise, and/or be adaptedto utilise, its circuitry/ies for configuring. Allocation informationmay be considered a form of configuration data. Configuration data maycomprise and/or be represented by configuration information, and/or oneor more corresponding indications and/or message/s

Generally, configuring may include determining configuration datarepresenting the configuration and providing, e.g. transmitting, it toone or more other nodes (parallel and/or sequentially), which maytransmit it further to the radio node (or another node, which may berepeated until it reaches the wireless device). Alternatively, oradditionally, configuring a radio node, e.g., by a network node or otherdevice, may include receiving configuration data and/or data pertainingto configuration data, e.g., from another node like a network node,which may be a higher-level node of the network, and/or transmittingreceived configuration data to the radio node. Accordingly, determininga configuration and transmitting the configuration data to the radionode may be performed by different network nodes or entities, which maybe able to communicate via a suitable interface, e.g., an X2 interfacein the case of LTE or a corresponding interface for NR. Configuring aterminal may comprise scheduling downlink and/or uplink transmissionsfor the terminal, e.g. downlink data and/or downlink control signalingand/or DCI and/or uplink control or data or communication signaling, inparticular acknowledgement signaling, and/or configuring resourcesand/or a resource pool therefor.

A resource structure may be considered to be neighbored in frequencydomain by another resource structure, if they share a common borderfrequency, e.g. one as an upper frequency border and the other as alower frequency border. Such a border may for example be represented bythe upper end of a bandwidth assigned to a subcarrier n, which alsorepresents the lower end of a bandwidth assigned to a subcarrier n+1. Aresource structure may be considered to be neighbored in time domain byanother resource structure, if they share a common border time, e.g. oneas an upper (or right in the figures) border and the other as a lower(or left in the figures) border. Such a border may for example berepresented by the end of the symbol time interval assigned to a symboln, which also represents the beginning of a symbol time intervalassigned to a symbol n+1.

Generally, a resource structure being neighbored by another resourcestructure in a domain may also be referred to as abutting and/orbordering the other resource structure in the domain.

A resource structure may general represent a structure in time and/orfrequency domain, in particular representing a time interval and afrequency interval. A resource structure may comprise and/or becomprised of resource elements, and/or the time interval of a resourcestructure may comprise and/or be comprised of symbol time interval/s,and/or the frequency interval of a resource structure may compriseand/or be comprised of subcarrier/s. A resource element may beconsidered an example for a resource structure, a slot or mini-slot or aPhysical Resource Block (PRB) or parts thereof may be considered others.A resource structure may be associated to a specific channel, e.g. aPUSCH or PUCCH, in particular resource structure smaller than a slot orPRB.

Examples of a resource structure in frequency domain comprise abandwidth or band, or a bandwidth part. A bandwidth part may be a partof a bandwidth available for a radio node for communicating, e.g. due tocircuitry and/or configuration and/or regulations and/or a standard. Abandwidth part may be configured or configurable to a radio node. Insome variants, a bandwidth part may be the part of a bandwidth used forcommunicating, e.g. transmitting and/or receiving, by a radio node. Thebandwidth part may be smaller than the bandwidth (which may be a devicebandwidth defined by the circuitry/configuration of a device, and/or asystem bandwidth, e.g. available for a RAN). It may be considered that abandwidth part comprises one or more resource blocks or resource blockgroups, in particular one or more PRBs or PRB groups. A bandwidth partmay pertain to, and/or comprise, one or more carriers.

A carrier may generally represent a frequency range or band and/orpertain to a central frequency and an associated frequency interval. Itmay be considered that a carrier comprises a plurality of subcarriers. Acarrier may have assigned to it a central frequency or center frequencyinterval, e.g. represented by one or more subcarriers (to eachsubcarrier there may be generally assigned a frequency bandwidth orinterval). Different carriers may be non-overlapping, and/or may beneighboring in frequency domain.

It should be noted that the term “radio” in this disclosure may beconsidered to pertain to wireless communication in general, and may alsoinclude wireless communication utilising millimeter waves, in particularabove one of the thresholds 10 GHz or 20 GHz or 50 GHz or 52 GHz or 52.6GHz or 60 GHz or 72 GHz or 100 GHz or 114 GHz. Such communication mayutilise one or more carriers, e.g. in FDD and/or carrier aggregation.Upper frequency boundaries may correspond to 300 GHz or 200 GHz or 120GHz or any of the thresholds larger than the one representing the lowerfrequency boundary.

A radio node, in particular a network node or a terminal, may generallybe any device adapted for transmitting and/or receiving radio and/orwireless signals and/or data, in particular communication data, inparticular on at least one carrier. The at least one carrier maycomprise a carrier accessed based on an LBT procedure (which may becalled LBT carrier), e.g., an unlicensed carrier. It may be consideredthat the carrier is part of a carrier aggregate.

Receiving or transmitting on a cell or carrier may refer to receiving ortransmitting utilizing a frequency (band) or spectrum associated to thecell or carrier. A cell may generally comprise and/or be defined by orfor one or more carriers, in particular at least one carrier for ULcommunication/transmission (called UL carrier) and at least one carrierfor DL communication/transmission (called DL carrier). It may beconsidered that a cell comprises different numbers of UL carriers and DLcarriers. Alternatively, or additionally, a cell may comprise at leastone carrier for UL communication/transmission and DLcommunication/transmission, e.g., in TDD-based approaches.

A channel may generally be a logical, transport or physical channel. Achannel may comprise and/or be arranged on one or more carriers, inparticular a plurality of subcarriers. A channel carrying and/or forcarrying control signaling/control information may be considered acontrol channel, in particular if it is a physical layer channel and/orif it carries control plane information. Analogously, a channel carryingand/or for carrying data signaling/user information may be considered adata channel, in particular if it is a physical layer channel and/or ifit carries user plane information. A channel may be defined for aspecific communication direction, or for two complementary communicationdirections (e.g., UL and DL, or sidelink in two directions), in whichcase it may be considered to have two component channels, one for eachdirection. Examples of channels comprise a channel for low latencyand/or high reliability transmission, in particular a channel forUltra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC), which may be forcontrol and/or data.

In general, a symbol may represent and/or be associated to a symbol timelength, which may be dependent on the carrier and/or subcarrier spacingand/or numerology of the associated carrier. Accordingly, a symbol maybe considered to indicate a time interval having a symbol time length inrelation to frequency domain. A symbol time length may be dependent on acarrier frequency and/or bandwidth and/or numerology and/or subcarrierspacing of, or associated to, a symbol. Accordingly, different symbolsmay have different symbol time lengths. In particular, numerologies withdifferent subcarrier spacings may have different symbol time length.Generally, a symbol time length may be based on, and/or include, a guardtime interval or cyclic extension, e.g. prefix or postfix.

A sidelink may generally represent a communication channel (or channelstructure) between two UEs and/or terminals, in which data istransmitted between the participants (UEs and/or terminals) via thecommunication channel, e.g. directly and/or without being relayed via anetwork node. A sidelink may be established only and/or directly via airinterface/s of the participant, which may be directly linked via thesidelink communication channel. In some variants, sidelink communicationmay be performed without interaction by a network node, e.g. on fixedlydefined resources and/or on resources negotiated between theparticipants. Alternatively, or additionally, it may be considered thata network node provides some control functionality, e.g. by configuringresources, in particular one or more resource pool/s, for sidelinkcommunication, and/or monitoring a sidelink, e.g. for charging purposes.

Sidelink communication may also be referred to as device-to-device (D2D)communication, and/or in some cases as ProSe (Proximity Services)communication, e.g. in the context of LTE. A sidelink may be implementedin the context of V2x communication (Vehicular communication), e.g. V2V(Vehicle-to-Vehicle), V2I (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure) and/or V2P(Vehicle-to-Person). Any device adapted for sidelink communication maybe considered a user equipment or terminal.

A sidelink communication channel (or structure) may comprise one or more(e.g., physical or logical) channels, e.g. a PSCCH (Physical SidelinkControl CHannel, which may for example carry control information like anacknowledgement position indication, and/or a PSSCH (Physical SidelinkShared CHannel, which for example may carry data and/or acknowledgementsignaling). It may be considered that a sidelink communication channel(or structure) pertains to and/or used one or more carrier/s and/orfrequency range/s associated to, and/or being used by, cellularcommunication, e.g. according to a specific license and/or standard.Participants may share a (physical) channel and/or resources, inparticular in frequency domain and/or related to a frequency resourcelike a carrier) of a sidelink, such that two or more participantstransmit thereon, e.g. simultaneously, and/or time-shifted, and/or theremay be associated specific channels and/or resources to specificparticipants, so that for example only one participant transmits on aspecific channel or on a specific resource or specific resources, e.g.,in frequency domain and/or related to one or more carriers orsubcarriers.

A sidelink may comply with, and/or be implemented according to, aspecific standard, e.g. an LTE-based standard and/or NR. A sidelink mayutilise TDD (Time Division Duplex) and/or FDD (Frequency DivisionDuplex) technology, e.g. as configured by a network node, and/orpreconfigured and/or negotiated between the participants. A userequipment may be considered to be adapted for sidelink communication ifit, and/or its radio circuitry and/or processing circuitry, is adaptedfor utilising a sidelink, e.g. on one or more frequency ranges and/orcarriers and/or in one or more formats, in particular according to aspecific standard. It may be generally considered that a Radio AccessNetwork is defined by two participants of a sidelink communication.Alternatively, or additionally, a Radio Access Network may berepresented, and/or defined with, and/or be related to a network nodeand/or communication with such a node.

Communication or communicating may generally comprise transmittingand/or receiving signaling. Communication on a sidelink (or sidelinksignaling) may comprise utilising the sidelink for communication(respectively, for signaling). Sidelink transmission and/or transmittingon a sidelink may be considered to comprise transmission utilising thesidelink, e.g. associated resources and/or transmission formats and/orcircuitry and/or the air interface. Sidelink reception and/or receivingon a sidelink may be considered to comprise reception utilising thesidelink, e.g. associated resources and/or transmission formats and/orcircuitry and/or the air interface. Sidelink control information (e.g.,SCI) may generally be considered to comprise control informationtransmitted utilising a sidelink.

Generally, carrier aggregation (CA) may refer to the concept of a radioconnection and/or communication link between a wireless and/or cellularcommunication network and/or network node and a terminal or on asidelink comprising a plurality of carriers for at least one directionof transmission (e.g. DL and/or UL), as well as to the aggregate ofcarriers. A corresponding communication link may be referred to ascarrier aggregated communication link or CA communication link; carriersin a carrier aggregate may be referred to as component carriers (CC). Insuch a link, data may be transmitted over more than one of the carriersand/or all the carriers of the carrier aggregation (the aggregate ofcarriers). A carrier aggregation may comprise one (or more) dedicatedcontrol carriers and/or primary carriers (which may e.g. be referred toas primary component carrier or PCC), over which control information maybe transmitted, wherein the control information may refer to the primarycarrier and other carriers, which may be referred to as secondarycarriers (or secondary component carrier, SCC). However, in someapproaches, control information may be sent over more than one carrierof an aggregate, e.g. one or more PCCs and one PCC and one or more SCCs.

A transmission may generally pertain to a specific channel and/orspecific resources, in particular with a starting symbol and endingsymbol in time, covering the interval therebetween. A scheduledtransmission may be a transmission scheduled and/or expected and/or forwhich resources are scheduled or provided or reserved. However, notevery scheduled transmission has to be realized. For example, ascheduled downlink transmission may not be received, or a scheduleduplink transmission may not be transmitted due to power limitations, orother influences (e.g., a channel on an unlicensed carrier beingoccupied). A transmission may be scheduled for a transmission timingsubstructure (e.g., a mini-slot, and/or covering only a part of atransmission timing structure) within a transmission timing structurelike a slot. A border symbol may be indicative of a symbol in thetransmission timing structure at which the transmission starts or ends.

Predefined in the context of this disclosure may refer to the relatedinformation being defined for example in a standard, and/or beingavailable without specific configuration from a network or network node,e.g. stored in memory, for example independent of being configured.Configured or configurable may be considered to pertain to thecorresponding information being set/configured, e.g. by the network or anetwork node.

A configuration or schedule, like a mini-slot configuration and/orstructure configuration, may schedule transmissions, e.g. for thetime/transmissions it is valid, and/or transmissions may be scheduled byseparate signaling or separate configuration, e.g. separate RRCsignaling and/or downlink control information signaling. Thetransmission/s scheduled may represent signaling to be transmitted bythe device for which it is scheduled, or signaling to be received by thedevice for which it is scheduled, depending on which side of acommunication the device is. It should be noted that downlink controlinformation or specifically DCI signaling may be considered physicallayer signaling, in contrast to higher layer signaling like MAC (MediumAccess Control) signaling or RRC layer signaling. The higher the layerof signaling is, the less frequent/the more time/resource consuming itmay be considered, at least partially due to the information containedin such signaling having to be passed on through several layers, eachlayer requiring processing and handling.

A scheduled transmission, and/or transmission timing structure like amini-slot or slot, may pertain to a specific channel, in particular aphysical uplink shared channel, a physical uplink control channel, or aphysical downlink shared channel, e.g. PUSCH, PUCCH or PDSCH, and/or maypertain to a specific cell and/or carrier aggregation. A correspondingconfiguration, e.g. scheduling configuration or symbol configuration maypertain to such channel, cell and/or carrier aggregation. It may beconsidered that the scheduled transmission represents transmission on aphysical channel, in particular a shared physical channel, for example aphysical uplink shared channel or physical downlink shared channel. Forsuch channels, semi-persistent configuring may be particularly suitable.

Generally, a configuration may be a configuration indicating timing,and/or be represented or configured with corresponding configurationdata. A configuration may be embedded in, and/or comprised in, a messageor configuration or corresponding data, which may indicate and/orschedule resources, in particular semi-persistently and/orsemi-statically.

A control region of a transmission timing structure may be an intervalin time and/or frequency domain for intended or scheduled or reservedfor control signaling, in particular downlink control signaling, and/orfor a specific control channel, e.g. a physical downlink control channellike PDCCH. The interval may comprise, and/or consist of, a number ofsymbols in time, which may be configured or configurable, e.g. by(UE-specific) dedicated signaling (which may be single-cast, for exampleaddressed to or intended for a specific UE), e.g. on a PDCCH, or RRCsignaling, or on a multicast or broadcast channel. In general, thetransmission timing structure may comprise a control region covering aconfigurable number of symbols. It may be considered that in general theborder symbol is configured to be after the control region in time. Acontrol region may be associated, e.g. via configuration and/ordetermination, to one or more specific UEs and/or formats of PDCCHand/or DCI and/or identifiers, e.g. UE identifiers and/or RNTIs orcarrier/cell identifiers, and/or be represented and/or associated to aCORESET and/or a search space. A search space may comprise and/or beassociated to a control region or CORESET and/or time and/or frequencyresources, which may be configured and/or indicated for reception ofcontrol information and/or signaling on a (e.g., physical) controlchannel like PDCCH or PSCCH. To a search space, additional parametersand/or conditions may be provided and/or associated, e.g. definingand/or configuring and/or indicating and/or specifying control signalingor control information to search for and/or monitor in the search space,and/or associated control region or CORESET or resources. For example,one or more signaling characteristics of such control signaling and/orcontrol information may be provided, e.g. signaling format and/orpossible position within the resources and/or repetition and/or codingand/or priority between different types or formats and/or hashingfunction.

The duration of a symbol (symbol time length or interval) of thetransmission timing structure may generally be dependent on a numerologyand/or carrier, wherein the numerology and/or carrier may beconfigurable. The numerology may be the numerology to be used for thescheduled transmission.

A transmission timing structure may comprise a plurality of symbols,and/or define an interval comprising several symbols (respectively theirassociated time intervals). In the context of this disclosure, it shouldbe noted that a reference to a symbol for ease of reference may beinterpreted to refer to the time domain projection or time interval ortime component or duration or length in time of the symbol, unless it isclear from the context that the frequency domain component also has tobe considered. Examples of transmission timing structures include slot,subframe, mini-slot (which also may be considered a substructure of aslot), slot aggregation (which may comprise a plurality of slots and maybe considered a superstructure of a slot), respectively their timedomain component. A transmission timing structure may generally comprisea plurality of symbols defining the time domain extension (e.g.,interval or length or duration) of the transmission timing structure,and arranged neighboring to each other in a numbered sequence. A timingstructure (which may also be considered or implemented assynchronisation structure) may be defined by a succession of suchtransmission timing structures, which may for example define a timinggrid with symbols representing the smallest grid structures. Atransmission timing structure, and/or a border symbol or a scheduledtransmission may be determined or scheduled in relation to such a timinggrid. A transmission timing structure of reception may be thetransmission timing structure in which the scheduling control signalingis received, e.g. in relation to the timing grid. A transmission timingstructure may in particular be a slot or subframe or in some cases, amini-slot.

Feedback signaling may be considered a form or control signaling, e.g.uplink or sidelink control signaling, like UCI (Uplink ControlInformation) signaling or SCI (Sidelink Control Information) signaling.Feedback signaling may in particular comprise and/or representacknowledgement signaling and/or acknowledgement information and/ormeasurement reporting.

Signaling utilising, and/or on and/or associated to, resources or aresource structure may be signaling covering the resources or structure,signaling on the associated frequency/ies and/or in the associated timeinterval/s. It may be considered that a signaling resource structurecomprises and/or encompasses one or more substructures, which may beassociated to one or more different channels and/or types of signalingand/or comprise one or more holes (resource element/s not scheduled fortransmissions or reception of transmissions). A resource substructure,e.g. a feedback resource structure, may generally be continuous in timeand/or frequency, within the associated intervals. It may be consideredthat a substructure, in particular a feedback resource structure,represents a rectangle filled with one or more resource elements intime/frequency space. However, in some cases, a resource structure orsubstructure, in particular a frequency resource range, may represent anon-continuous pattern of resources in one or more domains, e.g. timeand/or frequency. The resource elements of a substructure may bescheduled for associated signaling.

Example types of signaling comprise signaling of a specificcommunication direction, in particular, uplink signaling, downlinksignaling, sidelink signaling, as well as reference signaling (e.g., SRSor CRS or CSI-RS), communication signaling, control signaling, and/orsignaling associated to a specific channel like PUSCH, PDSCH, PUCCH,PDCCH, PSCCH, PSSCH, etc.).

In the context of this disclosure, there may be distinguished betweendynamically scheduled or aperiodic transmission and/or configuration,and semi-static or semi-persistent or periodic transmission and/orconfiguration. The term “dynamic” or similar terms may generally pertainto configuration/transmission valid and/or scheduled and/or configuredfor (relatively) short timescales and/or a (e.g., predefined and/orconfigured and/or limited and/or definite) number of occurrences and/ortransmission timing structures, e.g. one or more transmission timingstructures like slots or slot aggregations, and/or for one or more(e.g., specific number) of transmission/occurrences. Dynamicconfiguration may be based on low-level signaling, e.g. controlsignaling on the physical layer and/or MAC layer, in particular in theform of DCI or SCI. Periodic/semi-static may pertain to longertimescales, e.g. several slots and/or more than one frame, and/or anon-defined number of occurrences, e.g., until a dynamic configurationcontradicts, or until a new periodic configuration arrives. A periodicor semi-static configuration may be based on, and/or be configured with,higher-layer signaling, in particular RCL layer signaling and/or RRCsignaling and/or MAC signaling.

In this disclosure, for purposes of explanation and not limitation,specific details are set forth (such as particular network functions,processes and signaling steps) in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the technique presented herein. It will be apparent toone skilled in the art that the present concepts and aspects may bepracticed in other variants and variants that depart from these specificdetails.

For example, the concepts and variants are partially described in thecontext of Long Term Evolution (LTE) or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) or NewRadio mobile or wireless communications technologies; however, this doesnot rule out the use of the present concepts and aspects in connectionwith additional or alternative mobile communication technologies such asthe Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) or IEEE standards asIEEE 802.11ad or IEEE 802.11 ay. While described variants may pertain tocertain Technical Specifications (TSs) of the Third GenerationPartnership Project (3GPP), it will be appreciated that the presentapproaches, concepts and aspects could also be realized in connectionwith different Performance Management (PM) specifications.

Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the services,functions and steps explained herein may be implemented using softwarefunctioning in conjunction with a programmed microprocessor, or using anApplication Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a Digital SignalProcessor (DSP), a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or generalpurpose computer. It will also be appreciated that while the variantsdescribed herein are elucidated in the context of methods and devices,the concepts and aspects presented herein may also be embodied in aprogram product as well as in a system comprising control circuitry,e.g. a computer processor and a memory coupled to the processor, whereinthe memory is encoded with one or more programs or program products thatexecute the services, functions and steps disclosed herein.

It is believed that the advantages of the aspects and variants presentedherein will be fully understood from the foregoing description, and itwill be apparent that various changes may be made in the form,constructions and arrangement of the exemplary aspects thereof withoutdeparting from the scope of the concepts and aspects described herein orwithout sacrificing all of its advantageous effects. The aspectspresented herein can be varied in many ways.

Some useful abbreviations comprise

Abbreviation Explanation ACK/NACK Acknowledgment/NegativeAcknowledgement ARQ Automatic Repeat reQuest BER Bit Error Rate BLERBlock Error Rate BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying BWP BandWidth Part CAZACConstant Amplitude Zero Cross Correlation CB Code Block CBG Code BlockGroup CCE Control Channel Element CDM Code Division Multiplex CM CubicMetric CORESET Control Resource Set CQI Channel Quality Information CRBCommon Resource Block CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check CRS Common referencesignal CSI Channel State Information CSI-RS Channel state informationreference signal DAI Downlink Assignment Indicator DCI Downlink ControlInformation DFT Discrete Fourier Transform DFTS-FDM DFT-spread-FDMDM(-)RS Demodulation reference signal(ing) eMBB enhanced MobileBroadBand FDD Frequency Division Duplex FDE Frequency DomainEqualisation FDF Frequency Domain Filtering FDM Frequency DivisionMultiplex FR1 Frequency Range 1 (for NR) FR2 Frequency Range 2 (for NR)HARQ Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request IAB Integrated Access and BackhaulIE Information Element IFFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transform IR ImpulseResponse ISI Inter Symbol Interference MBB Mobile Broadband MCSModulation and Coding Scheme MIMO Multiple-input-multiple-output MRCMaximum-ratio combining MRT Maximum-ratio transmission MU-MIMO Multiusermultiple-input-multiple-output OFDM/A Orthogonal Frequency DivisionMultiplex/Multiple Access PAPR Peak to Average Power Ratio PBCH PhysicalBroadcast CHannel PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel PDSCH PhysicalDownlink Shared Channel PRACH Physical Random Access CHannel PRBPhysical Resource Block PUCCH Physical Uplink Control Channel PUSCHPhysical Uplink Shared Channel PSD Power Spectral Density (P)SCCH(Physical) Sidelink Control Channel PSS Primary SynchronisationSignal(ing) (P)SSCH (Physical) Sidelink Shared Channel PT(-)RSPhase-Tracking RS QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation OCC OrthogonalCover Code QPSK Quadrature Phase Shift Keying PSD Power Spectral DensityRAN Radio Access Network RAT Radio Access Technology RB Resource BlockREG Resource Element Group RNTI Radio Network Temporary Identifier RRCRadio Resource Control RS Reference Signal(ing) RX Receiver, Reception,Reception-related/side SA Scheduling Assignment SC-FDE Single CarrierFrequency Domain Equalisation SC-FDM/A Single Carrier Frequency DivisionMultiplex/Multiple Access SCI Sidelink Control Information SIB SystemInformation Block SINR Signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio SIRSignal-to-interference ratio SNR Signal-to-noise-ratio SR SchedulingRequest SRS Sounding Reference Signal(ing) SSS Secondary SynchronisationSignal(ing) SVD Singular-value decomposition TB Transport Block TDD TimeDivision Duplex TDM Time Division Multiplex TX Transmitter,Transmission, Transmission-related/side UCI Uplink Control InformationUE User Equipment URLLC Ultra Low Latency High Reliability CommunicationVL-MIMO Very-large multiple-input-multiple-output VRB Virtual ResourceBlock ZF Zero Forcing ZP Zero-Power, e.g. muted CSI-RS symbol

Abbreviations may be considered to follow 3GPP usage if applicable.

1. A method of operating a transmitting radio node in a wirelesscommunication network, the method comprising: transmitting first controlsignaling in a control region, the first control signaling having atleast a first signaling characteristic from a set of signalingcharacteristics, the signaling characteristics of the set of signalingcharacteristics being associated to the control region.
 2. The methodaccording to claim 1, wherein the set of signaling characteristics atleast one of is and comprises a set of aggregation levels available forcontrol signaling.
 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein aduration of first control signaling is associated to the first signalingcharacteristic.
 4. The method according to claim 1, wherein a frequencydistribution of first control signaling is associated to the firstsignaling characteristic.
 5. The method according to claim 1, whereinthe first control signaling at least one of comprises and has associatedto it first reference signaling.
 6. The method according to claim 5,wherein first reference signaling comprises at least one of DemodulationReference Signaling, DMRS, and tracking reference signaling.
 7. Themethod according to claim 1, wherein the first control signaling is froma set of control signalings available for transmission in the controlregion, each of the set of control signalings being associated to asignaling characteristic from the set of signaling characteristics. 8.The method according to claim 1, wherein the location of referencesignaling in the control region is from a set of nested locations. 9.The method according to claim 1, wherein first reference signaling isassociated to the first control signaling, the first reference signalingbeing from a set of reference signalings.
 10. The method according toclaim 1, wherein at least one of a duration and frequency domainextension of first reference signaling associated to the first controlsignaling is associated to the first signaling characteristic.
 11. Atransmitting radio node for a wireless communication network, thetransmitting radio node being configured to: transmit first controlsignaling in a control region, the first control signaling having atleast a first signaling characteristic from a set of signalingcharacteristics, the signaling characteristics of the set of signalingcharacteristics being associated to the control region.
 12. A method ofoperating a receiving radio node in a wireless communication network,the method comprising: communicating with at least one of a network nodeand a transmitting radio node based on first control signaling receivedin a control region, the first control signaling having at least a firstsignaling characteristic from a set of signaling characteristics thesignaling characteristics of the set of signaling characteristics beingassociated to the control region.
 13. The method according to claim 12,wherein the set of signaling characteristics at least one of is andcomprises a set of aggregation levels available for control signaling.14. The method according to claim 12, wherein a duration of firstcontrol signaling is associated to the first signaling characteristic.15. The method according to claim 12, wherein a frequency distributionof first control signaling is associated to the first signalingcharacteristic.
 16. The method according to claim 12, wherein the firstcontrol signaling at least one of comprises and has associated to itfirst reference signaling.
 17. The method according to claim 12, whereinthe first control signaling is from a set of control signalingsavailable for transmission in the control region, each of the set ofcontrol signalings being associated to a signaling characteristic fromthe set of signaling characteristics.
 18. The method according to claim12, wherein the location of reference signaling in the control region isfrom a set of nested locations.
 19. A receiving radio node for awireless communication network, the receiving radio node beingconfigured to: communicate with at least one of a network node and atransmitting radio node based on first control signaling received in acontrol region, the first control signaling having at least a firstsignaling characteristic from a set of signaling characteristics, thesignaling characteristics of the set of signaling characteristics beingassociated to the control region.
 20. A computer storage medium storingcomputer program instructions that, when executed, cause processingcircuitry to at least one of control and perform a method, the methodcomprising: transmitting first control signaling in a control region,the first control signaling having at least a first signalingcharacteristic from a set of signaling characteristics, the signalingcharacteristics of the set of signaling characteristics being associatedto the control region.